A Minor Sun
by jozette
Summary: Dean's second, voluntary time in Hell has been transformative. Both Dean and Cas have new senses and tastes, bringing nearly infinite possibilities for pleasure and pain together. Is the choice still theirs?
1. Chapter 1

Sam looked at his brother from the passenger seat and knew that Dean was getting ready to propose a game of "Gank 'Em Up," which never failed to remind the younger brother about the poet Wallace Stevens.

"Come on, Sam, put down your book and play just one game. I'll even let you choose the setting," Dean said, fidgeting in the driver seat. "We have over three hours until we reach the North Carolina mountains and I feel like I'm stuck in the strip mall circle of hell."

Sam's old English Lit professor once told a story about Wallace Stevens, who was an insurance salesman by day and poet by night. The other people in his carpool had discovered there was one particular exit on the way into the city where the man transformed twice a day. On one side of the exit, Stevens could only talk about insurance; on the other, he was all poet.

The story had stuck with Sam because he'd long seen his brother undergo a similar transformation on their long road trips. Going into or coming out of a job, Dean was cranky and pushy and cocky-but at some point when they were far from any responsibilities, when they were two pirates on the high seas of the highways, Dean was actually a pretty cool guy.

Sam gave a theatrical sigh."Naw, man, us mere mortals are no match for the Khan."

It was almost as much fun to egg on Dean as it was to play "Gank 'Em Up." The title and rules had changed over the years, but it was the same basic concept from when they were kids kicking the front seat with their dad driving. But in recent months Dean had been taking it taken more seriously than ever. Which was both worrisome and hilarious.

His big brother did not disappoint. "How many times do I have to tell you what was so cool about Genghis Khan was that he was just a guy. Some kid in Bumfuck Mongolia who didn't look very promising, with no extra special powers, not chosen by demons or angels. He was just good at getting shit done."

It was all Sam could do not to laugh at his brother's earnest reverence for the long-dead military leader. His eye-roll did not go unnoticed.

"All right fine, I'll choose the scenario," Dean huffed. "You're at the top of the Empire State Building. There are demons blocking the elevators and stairs. You've got some school kids and a really pretty teacher and a werewolf holding them hostage. Your only weapons are from the next three things we pass on your side of the road. Winner gets to choose where we eat tonight."

Sam looked out the window obediently. "OK, uh, I see a farm-and-feed store with some livestock trucks in the parking lot, a video store and a Dairy Queen."

"Damn, you got lucky. All kinds of stuff you can use as weapons in the farm store." His brother looked on his side of the road. "And I see a couple Indian souvenir stands and a liquor store -shit, do you think we should stop? I'd hate to end up in a dry county like we did last time we hit the Carolinas."

"Don't try to distract -you were the one who wanted to play, so play right," Sam chided the driver. "The other thing you saw was a ladies' clothing store."

Dean shrugged confidently. "I bet they have some great barbecue around here."

Sam put down his book to consider. "The first thing I would do, would be to fix all of the demons within devil's trap made out of some holy oil. There would be some kind of useful oil at the livestock store, and I know the spell." His brother nodded, his eyes on the road. "And about the werewolf, I saw some pigs back there in the parking lot, so I'd just feed it one of the pigs and that should slow it down."

"You can't do that! That that goes against the Rule of Credulity," Dean protested. Actually it was Sam that instituted the rule long ago, as his brother was often carried away by imagining Chuck Norris appearing out of nowhere and other completely improbable twists from his favorite horror movies, complete with lots of girls running around in their underwear. "There has never been and never will be at pig in the Empire State Building."

Sam found the game working its magic on him despite himself. "Just think about it, Dean: pigs' organs are the most similar to humans'. If they can use their heart valves in transplants, maybe we should carry around a couple of pig hearts just in case we run into a werewolf—it might slow them down from ripping out people's hearts."

"Yeah or piss them off. But it sure won't stop them for long. OK my turn," Dean said eagerly. "So in that souvenir shop, I bet they have jewelry—charms and dreamcatcher stuff."

Sam groaned at his adversary's good fortune.

"You feel where I'm going with this? Cheap silver gegaws probably made in China? And I know for a fact that every liquor store has a gun, which I'm sure I could convince the honor to let me borrow."

This understatement elicited a snort.

"And there's probably sage or herbs or whatever the local tribes use around here for dispelling evil spirits. I figure I could go up there and shoot me a werewolf in the chest before anyone was the wiser—"

"Not so fast, cowboy. It's not like when we were kids-they've got extra security in the Empire State Building ever since 9-11. How would you get your gun in there, tough guy?"

"New York is a tough town for hunters," Dean admitted, his brow furrowed in complete concentration. "So what are you gonna do? You know, even if you could get a pig up there, it's not like any self-respecting werewolf is going to choose that over a bunch of McNugget sized hearts of little kids. Pretty weak, my friend."

By this time, nothing else existed for them but the long stretches of blank road, superimposed with their imagination. "I could make any number of bombs with fertilizer from the feed store. There'd also be pipes I could use to create a contained explosion." Sam's gift with chemistry had helped them out more than once. "Or no, get this, a flame thrower that could fry up some demons pretty good and maybe even the werewolf."

Dean shot a look to the passenger side, happily taking in his brother's absorption in their private pastime.

"And I don't need a souvenir shop—silver is easy," Sam scoffed. "Somebody, either the kids or that teacher, is wearing something silver. I bet there's something silver in the gift shop, if not. And there's bound to be shell casings at the feed store-I could cook up some bullets."

"Dude, you can't just throw a bullet at the thing; you still need a gun."

"No, dude, _you_ need a gun," Sam said in a superior tone designed to infuriate. "There's these spring-loaded hinges and and things like that that farms use. Perfect start for a zip gun good enough to pierce the sternum. If the werewolf was slowed down enough by being burned, I could probably take one of those veterinary syringes and inject his heart with the silver. Hey, that's not a bad idea-"

Dean twisted his lip in grudging admiration. "OK, grant you, it is easier to smuggle that kind of stuff in than a real gun. But you didn't use anything from the other two places, which is a clear violation of the rules. And I'm not sure that you really took care of the demons."

"That's easy," Sam replied, leaning back in his seat. "I'd buy all the kids ice cream, and the teacher I'd ask out for a movie. I win."

"Not so fast, I have that beat by a mile." Dean kept his eyes carefully on the road. "Most of the Indians around here are Cherokee. I think they have a lot of mythology about spirit animals, so I think someone there could help me figure out how to summon—"

"How do you know so much about the Cherokee?" Sam interjected curiously.

"Dad had me memorize some of the basic stuff about all the tribes across the country. He said it was was a good starting place for knowing the local spirits." Dean dug at a sensitive spot. "You must have been studying something more important." His brother didn't rise to the bait. "So what I'm trying to summon is King Kong—"

"Wait, wait, wait," Sam objected. "That is way beyond the Bounds of Credulity."

"Hear me out, it makes perfect sense." Dean's eyes were shining. "We know that there is such a thing as a supernatural creature that takes the form of a big scary animal. What if, instead of a huge ape, Kong was more like a big black bear?"

Sam had always envied Dean's ability to get so into a fictional tale that it got filed under fact in his brain. This promised to be good, so he said, "Assuming the King Kong story was based on something that really happened, then what?"

"There's this Cherokee legend about summoning the Black Bear Spirit, about tracking it-sometimes it's on your side, sometimes it's not. Sometimes you eat it or vice versa. In one version of the tale, the bear used to be human but it decided to go wild and turn its back on civilization. It's ike the black sheep of the family, only a humanoid kind of bear."

"It's like a wendigo?" Sam asked, referring to humans that turned their back on civilization in Plains Indian myths.

"Sort of, except i'm not sure that it's a cannibal. At any rate, they've got rituals about communicating with this bear spirit that is somehow realted to them, which is more than we usually have to go on when we're hunting."

"Let me get this straight: you're going to summon King Kong and convince him to kill the demons and the werewolf because you're distant cousins? That's pathetic, brother. I win."

"No, see, there's more to it than that." Dean had a gloating smile. "The Navajo, at least I think it was them, they've also got their big black bear myths. In the one I'm thinking of, this warrior is all respected and has groupies and whatnot, but he thinks no one will love him for himself, not his skills.

"One day he talks to some demigod or other about it. The spirit changes the guy into this big scary black bear, so that only his true love won't be scared off. Then he's all miserable and alone, thinking no one will ever love him now that he's this monster. And the local tribes are all freaked out by this bear who's constantly in a bad mood. So they start offering up maidens to him to appease his misery, and of course one after another they run away screaming. Sound like any classic movie you know? Finally, a girl looks at him and loves him for what he is, and he turns back into a man."

Sam was speechless for a moment at his brother's folklore knowledge, but he recovered. "Man, this gives new meaning to the word tangential. I'm going to take a nap. Wake me up when you get to the point."

Dean drummed his fingers against the steering wheel in excitement. "Back in the Empire State, I summon King Kong and offer him the maiden he's been waiting for, the one who's not scared of him but doesn't give up the goods enough to turn him back into a man. If Kong can be strung along just right, he'd be happy enough to defend his new lady friend from demons, the werewolf, anything I want."

"You're going to volunteer the teacher in this scheme? That goes against the 'Never Rely on a Civilian' rule AND the 'Never Get a Civilian Killed' rules. I'm surprised at you Dean. Forfeit."

"I'm sure that ladies' clothing store had something in my size," Dean said, deadpan.

"You? You would be Fay Wray?" Sam sat up straight "While I would pay good money to see that happen, what makes you think any big black bear, that anyone, would want the kind of woman you would make?"

Dean was unusually tractable. "That's part of the plan. See, I have the gun from the liquor store and the silver bullets, I just have to get them past the metal detector. They let women through those things all the time with the old 'oops, it's my underwire' excuse," he finished in a falsetto. "And you're right, nobody would want to look that close at an ugly lady's bra and panties. Hell, it's New York, they see the Adam's apple, they know better than to look."

"So you wouldnt just wear the underwire, you'd have the whole set?" Sam chortled.

"When in Rome, my friend. Genghis Khan was all about the disguises," Dean said in a professorial tone. "He and his warriors regularly dressed up like merchants and other sissy-ass costumes to make people think they were anything less than one of the best-trained armies that ever lived. I read about this one battle-"

Sam listened to his brother drone on and held on to the levity the way he'd learned to hold on to anything pleasant-with the full knowledge that life wasn't that simple. It was like Sam himself must have looked when he was in college and mastered a particularly difficult chemistry equation.

Dean had so seldom allowed himself to really unfurl his intelligence because he didn't think of himself as the smart kid. But sometime in the last couple months it's like something had switched on in his older brother's brain and he was swimming in his own genius.

Sam listened to all the ideas for how to lay siege to the Empire State Building that were pouring out of his brother's mouth, and wished he could simply be happy that they weren't quarreling with each other. That Dean wasn't sullen and depressed the way he was most of the time now.

It was easy to see that the job was wearing on Dean, that he wasn't himself since coming back from hell. Hell, both of them had this upcoming apocalypse and, each with a supernatural Cinderlla claiming one of the brothers was their lost shoe they were going to try on for size. The Winchesters had been living off the dregs of their strength for months now. But Sam knew this one person better than any other, and there was something extra, on top of the towering pile of other shit, going on with his brother.

It all started about five months ago when they were in an antique store checking to see if some actual evil talismans were being sold as costume jewelry. Dean was looking idly at a bookshelf and then, twenty minutes later, after Sam had interviewed the owner by himself, Dean was still at the same bookshelf.

"How much is this?" he asked, brandishing a book.

"Take the whole set off my hands and I'll give it to you for $15," the proprietor said.

As far as Sam knew, Dean never read anything except for the purposes of killing or avoiding being killed, so he was astonished to see his brother happily load the entire Time-Life _Great Generals_ book series into the trunk.

Something kept Sam from teasing his brother about his newfound historical interests. The first book Dean went for was about Rommel—their dad sometimes talked about him, so Sam chalked it up to nostalgia for their late father. Then he saw a few of the other books, mostly Attila the Hun and Alexander the Great, get some wear, but after that it was all about the Khan.

Dean read that book until it fell apart and he stitched it back together with dental floss. It was splattered with blood and ketchup and was by now a fixture in his jacket's inner pocket. He read it while eating and he read it before going to sleep. It made him laugh in a way that nothing had made his brother laugh for a long time.

The whole thing scared the shit out of Sam.

More than one person had commented on Dean's eerie attachment to the book. Sam had added some of his own splatters to the volume from his attempts to exorcise it by dunking it in holy water and test it for curses by rubbing it with lamb's liver. He'd even bought a substitute for the thing online and tried to sneak it into Dean's things, to no avail. Once he'd left it behind in the motel but Dean went back fifty miles for it. Sam had also bought his brother other books on Genghis Khan, too, but these were quickly devoured and then abandoned in favor of the original.

Since the rest of the time Dean tended to be irritable if not downright nasty, his brother supposed it was an improvement to sit across from someone quietly reading at dinner. If only all roads didn't lead to the Big Dance.

From what Sam had been able to gather, there was a legend that Genghis Khan would rise again and lead the army of armies. It wasn't hard to see the parallel with the standing invitation from the Archangel Michael to lead the apocalyptic army. The whole thing could be the angels trying to sneak their agenda past Dean's refusal.

There was no way to know for sure. But who was Sam, after all, to deny his brother this one small plank of happiness that Dean clung to in the face of the rising waters of doom?

The road had gotten pretty steep by the time they finally pulled into some barbecue joint. They took one step in and Sam hissed, "I call the shower first tonight, brother. These dives you like so much make me feel like I'm coated with lard inside and out."

The transformation had already begun to take place about half an hour ago. They sat in a booth and Sam gave in to what had been one of the conditions of his existence in his family: Dean was there to lead, he was there to follow.

"Naw, Sam, don't order a salad. You always order a salad in one of these places and then get pissed because it's a hunk of iceberg. This is not a salad place."

"I can order for myself, Dean," he muttered. When Sam was a kid he used to think of Dean as one of those sheep dogs that was programmed to herd sheep but would push around anything else that was handy.

"Have the chicken. You can never go wrong with chicken."

Dean was always freaking herding him, and Sam, the only army his brother-general had to command, gave in. "I'll have the chicken," he told the waitress.

The hardened look had settled back on his brother's face, so Sam let him read.

"Whatcha readin'?" someone said from the next table.

"Oh, just something about Genghis Khan, you know he was a Mongolian-"

"I know who he was-that's my rig outside," the beefy man who was around Sam's height nodded to the parking lot to the 18 wheeler. The brothers looked blank. "Truckers are some of the most educated folk you'll ever meet. We listen to audio books all day every day."

"Fair enough," Dean said and went back to his reading.

So as not to appear rude, Sam filled in the silence. "We spend a good bit of time on the road ourselves; it is a great place to think."

"I was always more an Attila fan, myself," the man pursued.

"Attila the Hun couldn't hold his liquor," Dean said without looking up.

"Khan was a man-whore! Do you know how many people in China are related to him?"

"He wasn't a man-whore!" Dean's face was flushing. "When his wife was kidnapped he created a law that stopped people from wife-stealing. The Khan stopped torture; he was ahead of his time. Hate to tell you: they overcharged you on that Phoenix University degree of yours."

"Oh yeah? So you're saying the Khan was cooler than Alexander the Great, who used elephants instead of little ponies?" the trucker scoffed. "Your feet would've been dragging on the ground riding on one of those teeny Mongolian horses."

"Alexander the Paranoid stabbed multiple friends in the back, when he didn't poison them first. He didn't know the value of loyalty." Sam could hear his brother's voice stilling into a dangerous calm.

"Check please," he motioned to the waitress, who seemed thoroughly entertained.

"Genghis Khan was just some yahoo that happened to be born when the Chinese dynasty was so decadent they could be defeated by a few big-talking, pony-riding illiterate bumpkins. Everyone makes this big deal about generals, but they're just a function of their time and—"

Dean was always fast, faster than his brother, so both Sam and the trucker were surprised by the fork that was now poised at the larger man's jugular.

"Nobody messes with the Khan," Dean gnashed through gritted teeth.

The man gave a lazy smile to the waitress and brought his hamhock of an arm towards Dean.

Who, of course, was no longer there to receive the blow. Sam watched his brother's fighting prowess, hewn out of all his stolen dreams and existing in some sacred place where not even his despair could corrode it. It was beautiful, the explosion of blows Dean pulled out of thin air and delivered to the much-larger opponent, though not without sustaining a little punishment himself.

"Dean, Dean, it's not worth it. Come on. We have a job, remember?" Sam took a haymaker himself while trying to separate the two men.

"Tell him, Sam, you don't mess with the Khan," Dean cried, beside himself about nothing in a way he didn't usually get without half a bottle of whiskey and blood on his hands.

"i'm really sorry," Sam said, throwing some money on the table."My brother has a lot on his mind." And he hauled Dean out to the Impala, where his older brother let him drive while Dean descended the next, worst, last rung into whatever hell he lived in these days.

Sam checked them into the motel. He fetched the liquor from the trunk. He found one of those old war movies Dean had taken to watching on TV. And then Sam did everything he could not to stare at his brother methodically drinking himself into a state of grace, like their father used to, during the darkest times.

"Except Dad was always furious about something," Sam told himself, looking through their scanty information on tomorrow's case. "Dean usually cares too much about everything. It's what makes him so easy to rile up—don't mess with Led Zeppelin, don't mess with Mustangs from such-and-such a year, don't mess with that special kind of rotgut that he drinks with Bobby, don't mess with those weird ketchup-flavored potato chips they only have in Canada—"

Sam's brother had more sacred cows than anyone he'd ever met, and Dean defended them passionately, though up until now, not at forkpoint. Sober, at any rate.

So why was Dean sitting there staring unseeingly at the television, the only sign of life the arm moving the glass to his lips?

"Hey, man, haven't you always told me not to let the idiots of the world get you down?" Sam finally ventured.

"I think I used the word 'assholes' but yeah, same concept," came the oddly flat voice.

Sam came to sit across from him. "What's going on, Dean? We're not even on the job yet and you're already on edge."

"We're always on the job these days, didn't you get the memo?" his brother said bitterly into his drink. "I just hate how smug that dude was. 'A general is just a function of his time.' If he knew anything except how to sit on his ass all day, he'd know that that kind of thinking is fucking dangerous."

This was a longer speech than Sam had expected. "So you think our situation is better, where people are constantly telling us how we were born to be these vessels and play this predestined role? We hate that. We complain about this fate business all the time."

Dean put down his drink and really looked at Sam for the first time in hours. "Don't get me wrong. If I ever get my hands on one of those Fate ladies, I'll gank that bitch but good. And it would be the stupidest thing I ever did."

He busied himself with topping off the glass and Sam hated that there was a part of his brain that could calculate the kind of hangover his brother would have tomorrow based on the amount left in the bottle.

"I hate Fate, I'll fight against it with my dying breath, I resent the hell out of all the shit those bitches keep cooking up for me. But take away that structure, that thing to fight against, and it's all just one big cage fight with no rules, no winners, no sense to it if we're merely determined by our environment." Dean's face was still. Unnaturally still. "Do you want to accept that you keep doing stupid shit over and over again for no reason at all? 'Cause I've tried that idea on for size and it doesn't suit me one bit."

Dean leaned back against the anonymous couch and felt for the remote to turn up the volume on the television, heedless of his brother's visible eyes, and the invisible angel-eyes, that watched him with concern.


	2. Chapter 2

"Since when is the CDC interested in missing persons?" Dean asked for the third time as they approached Buncombe County General Hospital somewhere in the mountains of North Carolina. He was trying to get his hung over brain into gear by force of sheer repetition of the facts.

"I keep telling you, the FBI was not the way to go on this one. All the feelers going out through Bobby's channels have been strictly medical. Over a hundred people at this folk festival disappeared overnight, and for some reason they're not calling law enforcement."

"This is probably some bad acid or some shit," Dean said, surveying the psychedelic paraphernalia in shop windows on the quaint street leading up to the hospital. "I hate that stuff. Let's leave it to the DEA or whoever deals with losers who dope themselves into a fugue state. They're probably lost in the woods."

"Alcohol is a drug," Sam pointed out. He, for one, remembered last night. "Maybe you should have some compassion."

"Maybe you should have enough for the two of us, blood-lush," Dean shot back as they reached the front desk. "Hello, ma'am, we're from the —"

"Thank God," the nurse said before they could even produce their badges. "Kelly? Can you show them?"

Dean was once again amazed at the power of a suit and a confident bearing—it didn't matter that his experience dealt with the kind of crimes they don't even have laws against: he really was an authority, compared to most people. God help them all. The nursing assistant certainly thought so as she beckoned for them to follow down the unusually quiet hallway.

"Here it is," Kelly said. She hadn't tried to make small talk at all on the walk to the elevator or on the ride down to the basement. It was odd. Sam's eyes were telegraphing the same message to him when the door opened to a hospital ward much like the ones they had been walking through.

A doctor greeted them. "It's all right officers," he said to the police officers clustered near the door. "Maybe they can make some sense out of this."

Kelly handed them gloves and a mask each and disappeared quickly. Once he had his mask on Dean could pinpoint it—the doctor's eyes that looked out over the mask at them were afraid-not an expression he was used to seeing in doctors.

"We're Johnson and Parker, CDC," Sam said, hoping the doctor would fill in their proper titles. Were they scientists or MDs?

"Oh, my apologies, I'm Dr. Evans, Mr. Johnson, we're a little turned upside down by being unsure of how to handle this. If it is indeed contagious, we need to quarantine the whole town. Right now there are roadblocks going in and out because we're calling the entire festival grounds a crime scene, but trying to keep a bunch of strung out teenagers contained is like trying to put the toothpaste—"

"DNA results are just back on this one, Doctor," a young man said as he approached from the elevator.

"How many?" The doctor asked.

"Three," the young man blushed and looked down at his clipboard.

The four of them walked into a room and found a nice-looking young man who seemed to be of part-Asian and part-Caucasian ancestry, cordoned off by an isolation tent, sitting on the bed hooked up to all sorts of cords and monitors. It was what one would expect in a hospital, but the man looked jarringly well. Yet even so, he radiated a little too much contentment from where he was tethered to the bed by the wires.

"Hello there," Sam said to the patient in that disarming way he had. "I'm Mr. Johnson, and you are-?"

"I'm Susan," the young man said.

Dean immediately felt on more familiar territory and sent a glance Sam's way asking him-"One of the usual culprits—any one of several varieties of possession? Demonic, ghost or otherwise?"

"Why don't you tell them who else you are?" the doctor prompted. A shadow of concern passed across the young man's face. "It's all right. They're from the CDC, they're not psychiatrists, they're not here to argue with you."

"We're here to listen," Dean said. "We're very open-minded."

"I'm also Robert," the young man said without the slightest change in demeanor. Normally if something were fighting for control in there you would see it.

"And I'm Bennett." The patient beamed at them and sank back onto the pillows to contemplate the ceiling.

The doctor cleared his throat. "And would you mind telling them the last thing you can remember?"

"We were hanging out, having a little fun after the last show." There was that beatific look again. "We woke up, went to the first show of the day, everything was great, man. We've never felt better. Some of our other friends got worried when they couldn't find us, though, and when we heard our names on the loudspeaker, we reported to the hospitality center, and they took us here."

The doctor walked out into the hallway and they followed.

"What kind of drugs did he have in his system?" Sam asked. "This kind of a music festival, it must be crawling with all kinds of intoxicants."

"Tox screen showed a little cannabis. Not even what I would expect to find in the average concert-goer. We we gave him some charcoal just to be on the safe side in case it was a mushroom that didn't get picked up on our tests."

"So if it's not drug-induced psychosis, it must be just straight up psychosis," Dean said, scraping the bottom of his psychiatric knowledge barrel. "You must have tried an antipsychotic or something to calm him down. He sure seems happy."

"No, we tried that on the first few and it didn't seem to do anything but knock them out, as you would expect for someone who wasn't actually psychotic. We've started leaving them be, for the most part, so that they can answer questions and help us get to the bottom of this. Luckily, they're all remarkably easygoing, and haven't started complaining yet about being held here."

"All? How many do you have with these symptoms?" Sam asked.

"Our hospital has 27 beds full, but they've started taking them to other area facilities. It's far beyond the manpower any of our local hospitals can muster, even if these people aren't being treated per se. The DNA tests alone have the local labs working night and day."

"DNA? Is that a standard procedure for a delusional person?" Dean was already thinking of ways to flush out whatever couple of stoned demons were crouching inside that kid.

The young orderly who had been standing there handed the brothers some papers. "The results confirm it, sir. Samples taken from multiple sites on the body match the DNA profiles of Bennett Chu, Robert Ogilvy, and Susan Thonton."

"We've all heard of genetic mosaicism, but that would be from a donated organ or something. Not three friends," Sam protested. Dean actually hadn't heard of it but the message was clear—that person in there was three flavors in one.

"Do you have photos of these three kids, Robert, Bennett and Susan?" Dean asked suddenly.

The doctor looked at him and handed the charts over as if unwillingly.

"Holy mother of—"

"Let me see," Sam said, looking over his shoulder.

The person sitting in that room was a mixture of the features belonging to the three photographs.

"That's not possible," Sam protested, and the doctor shot him a sympathetic glance.

"If it were one case, it would be scientifically fascinating." Dr. Evans admitted. "But about 150 people have disappeared, and we have less than half that number of bodies claiming to be that full 150. Whether this is an environmental toxin, a contagion, or a massive drug reaction, we have to figure it out and contain it."

"The last thing he —they—remember are sitting around in a tent passing a joint or something, and they woke up in the same body?" Dean was trying to fix on the series of events.

The physician took a breath and the young orderly began flipping through his papers more insistently.

"The last memory is of having a sexual encounter. A mutual sexual encounter. Most of the other cases are couples. Ironically, whole groups of friends have been affected, so among a population of over 2000 strangers the full magnitude of the situation has yet to strike people."

"And in case of any questions the authorities have a story, because any story will do to stave off hysteria," Sam stated with a jaded air that must have struck the physician as genuine, because it was.

"We decided early on to claim that it is a short-term drug reaction, and that the missing young people are receiving treatment as if for a mild drug poisoning; among a certain crowd that is apparently a badge of honor," the man said drily. "In addition, that the area has to be contained as a crime scene until the authorities can determine the source of the drug. Well, you fellows are aware that people can be kept in virtual quarantine without their suspecting a thing," the brothers exchanged a quizzical look—maybe the CDC was more badass than they thought, "But still, it's everything the concert organizers can do to keep the remaining people focused on having a good time and not on the fact that so many people have vanished."

Dean raised an eyebrow at his brother. They were probably giving kids free booze just to keep them stupid and uninquisitive. The notion of free beer just improved his mood by about 200%.

Sam grimaced at him. "Has anything like this ever happened at this location before? I hear the festival has been going on for about six years."

"No, not at all. We've had some ODs, alcohol poisonings, a few fights, but for the most part the Mountain Song festival has been nothing but good for this area. These are affluent kids who like to spend a week in the mud eating beans out of a can and pretending to be hobos. You know the type."

Dean opened his mouth.

"Actually, we don't," Sam cut in. "Would it be possible for us to go to the campsite, talk to some people? We'll be discreet."

"I'm sure you people know how to handle yourselves," Dr. Evans shook his head and touched his surgical mask reflexively. "I don't even like being here, myself, but if there is an infectious agent I was exposed yesterday before we knew what we were dealing with. I still wouldn't go down to that campground."

When they got in the elevator, Dean burst out, "I don't even like being around non-contagious hippies, and you volunteer us to spend time with a bunch of body-snatching bohemians?"

"You need to put your prejudices out of your head, Dean. These are just kids, and they're sitting ducks for what ever this thing is that's causing it. We have to figure out something fast before the real CDC gets here and starts complicating things."

Dean had his hand on his phone, "What we need is to get Bobby on the case; it must take some powerful magic to make a human smoothie like that."

"No, man," Sam said as they walked through the frightened faces in the main lobby and out the door. "It _generates_ some powerful magic. What happened to those 90 or so souls? If there were more than one soul inside that body, which I'm not sure is even possible, they wouldn't be as happy as that guy seemed."

Dean's brain was whirring. "Somebody's going through a bunch of stoned hippies and picking off their souls while they're riding the peace train? What about the bodies?"

"I don't know, that's what we've got to figure out. But think about how much energy this thing has already absorbed if it's 90 or souls richer than it was a few days ago. That's some serious mojo we have to stop."

Dean stopped on the sidewalk. "This is some fucked up shit!" he cried.

"Uh, that's our job. We're the 'fucked up shit department,'" Sam's shrug just made him more annoyed.

"No, I mean you know when you buy a box of crackers and you open it up and find out they've redesigned the box to distract you from seeing that there's actually fewer Cheez-its in there for the same price? That's what this demon is doing. Consolidating people into more efficient soul-packages or something, and pocketing the profits. This is some corporate downsizing shit and it's everything that's wrong with the world." Dean got in the car and slammed the door.

Sam stood there for a moment. This moodiness of Dean's was not a good sign. It didn't even make any sense. They had some kind of mass soul-harvesting going on, and Dean was getting upset about crackers.

"What would the Khan do?" he asked to try to lighten the mood as he got in.

"The Khan would have no problem at all scoring a bunch of hippie chicks. Which don't worry, I don't plan on doing, in case this is some kind of demonic STD or something."

Sam dialed Bobby's number and quickly got him up to speed.

"You keep your hands to yourself, too," Dean resumed as they neared wooded territory and spotted a clearing filled tents. "I know you like the granola type."

"If you see me with my hands on a couple of hippie chicks, you have my permission to take me down," Sam assured him.

"A couple?" Dean parked the car. "You must have had more fun in college than you let on. Who were the lucky ladies?"

"It was my friend Lizzie and my other friend Don. We'd been smoking weed, actually, which is why I asked Bobby to include intoxication in the variables he's looking for. Drugs open you up to things, that's just a fact."

Dean was looking at his younger brother incredulously.

"You never told me you went in for that kind of stuff."

"What? Weed? I just smoked a joint with friends every once in awhile to let off steam. I really did study almost all the time."

"With another dude," Dean said. "You never told me you got with dudes."

"I didn't 'get' with him. It was all very nice and friendly."

"Friendly? I have guy friends and I've never had sex with them."

"It was like this. We'd all been having a nice relaxed time, laughing and talking, and it came time to go to bed. It was obvious that someone was going to get to go home with Lizzie, but it was like none of us wanted to leave the other person out by deciding which of us it would be. I didn't touch him or anything: we shared a nice moment, the three of us. We were friends, that's all."

Feeling more relaxed now that he didn't think his brother was hiding another major thing about himself from him, Dean responded, "That sounds kind of hot, I admit, but I wouldn't use the word friendly. Sex isn't supposed to be friendly. That's just bizarre."

"Well, how is it supposed to be, then?" Sam always enjoyed hearing Dean's insights on romance.

"I don't know. It's like ganking someone, in a way. You aren't sure how it's going to go, who's in control-that's what revs you up, and if you were sure there wouldn't be a point. Otherwise it would be like saying," he yawned broadly, "'Hello, Mr. demon, I am definitely going to gank you,' and the demon says back, 'Very well, old chap.' Way to take all the spice out of life, Sam."

His older brother's logic never ceased to amaze the younger Winchester. "Hey man, you're the one that just compared fucking to ganking and is making yourself out to be in the right."

They stepped into the cluster of tents and and began moving through the people milling around between musical acts. Sam registered the obvious look of distaste on his brother's face. "If you were alive in the sixties, you'd be doing this sort of thing and loving it."

Dean stepped around and some people selling trail mix and bead necklaces. "That's the thing, it's not the sixties. We know better now!" A couple of people glared in their direction. "You don't have to get dirty and cover yourself with patchouli to have free love! Look at me, I'm all about the free love, and I'm clean."

"Somehow I don't think that will be a selling point in this crowd," Sam observed as the concert-goers studiously avoided their eyes.

Dean approached a girl in a halter top who was giving tarot card readings on top of a crate. "Hey there, can you tell us what's on the musical menu for tonight?"

She looked his suit up and down in obvious disfavor. "Nothing you'd probably be interested in, officer."

"Come on, what's the modern-day equivalent of Janis Joplin you kids today listen to?" Dean pursued, his hopes of finding a chick with a daddy complex or cop fetish fading fast.

"Oh, you missed Janis, she was yesterday," the girl shrugged, looking more hopefully at Sam. "You look like you might have a wild child inside of you."

"You have no idea," Dean replied. "I hate to break it to you sister, but that must have been some good shit you were smoking last night, 'cause Janis has been dead since 1970."

"I don't do drugs, officer." She and Dean stared each other down for a moment until Sam broke in.

"Oh! They made one of those Tupac kind of holograms of Janis Joplin? Wow, that must have been something to see." Sam was sure to make him pay for his ignorance later.

The girl focused on the more hippie-adjacent Sam. "It was awesome. Tonight they have Jimi Hendrix. But I'm sure there won't be any drugs, officer, so you don't need to check it out," she finished innocently. A customer traded the girl a couple of oranges for a reading, and the two brothers kept walking.

"Oh my God." Dean's mouth was hanging open. "You mean I can sort of see Jimi Hendrix onstage tonight?"

Evidently Jimi Hendrix was another one of Dean's sacred cows.

"II they're projecting the hologram when you happen to be fighting the demon, then I guess you'll see him. We really need to step up the pace. If the real CDC starts moving people to hidden facilities or whatever, this creature or demon could get out into the general population."

The two brothers walked through the entire camp area while some obscure folk-rock band peformed on the stage. People's backs turned as they walked past, whether to hide their stash or to avoid being questioned, they couldn't tell. Even the hackeysack players and drum circles seemed to shift back several yards at their approach.

"That this is like Moses parting the Red Sea, except I guess it would be the tie-dye sea. We've got to ditch the suits or people are gonna keep avoiding us," Dean observed.

Sam grabbed his arm. "No you're right, it _is_ like the red sea. Look around." Dean shook his head blankly. "What you think is the average number of red-headed people per hundred?"

"I don't know, maybe fifteen?"

"Actually it's a lot less than that—between two and six percent in the US. I'm seeing a lot of redheads, and most of them do not look like henna."

And here Dean always thought his brother preferred brunettes. "Yeah, that's really interesting, Encylopedia Brown, but I don't see what's it has to do with our downsizing demon."

"There was a legend for a long time- that gingers don't have souls."

Dean guffawed. "And that's all it is, a legend. We've seen plenty of redheads treated just the same as anybody else by the supernatural."

"We both know that legends usually come from something real."

"Bobby really has a damn soul!"

Sam looked smug. "What if that legend came from people noticing people with red hair getting passed over when a demon came through town? I bet whatever we're dealing with has, like, an allergy for redheads, and that's why their souls haven't been put in the mixer with everyone else."

"So this demon has the equivalent of lactose intolerance for red hair? I guess we could try to research what kind of creatures have a hang-up about gingers."

"That's one angle," Sam's grin was ominous.

"I feel ridiculous," Dean griped several hours later when they returned to the festival grounds.

"Didn't Genghis Khan have red hair?" Sam asked.

"Probably, but somehow I don't think it was in the Manic Panic shade of Charnel Cherry."

"Did you want to bleach your hair with Miss Clairol? We needed something that would show up on your dark locks." Sam was getting way too much enjoyment out of this. "At least now maybe the girls won't think you're square."

"Fantastic, I hope none of them get through this Hazmat hippie suit you rigged up for me." Dean fussed with the brightly colored mittens Sam had chosen to obscure the fact that they were wearing surgical gloves to minimize the risk of skin contact.

"I bet you're going to go over big with the girls now. You should keep your hair like this all the time, Dean. The red brings out your eyes," Sam teased.

The redhead-for-a-night Dean grabbed three beers on the way in. "And it makes you look like Raggedy Andy on 'roids," he snapped. Emptying the cups in quick succession, there was still little hope that the beer would take the edge off, but it felt familiar going down. "Whoever brought him back and made me have to gank Jimi, so help me, I'll kill them."

Sam sighed. "There is no chance that this is Jimi Hendrix's spirit mixing souls together. Bobby is very confident that this is some kind of deva—there's lots of historical documentation of entities that feed off crowds. They're ecstasy-leeches, not the unquiet undead."

They slide slowly through the audience, very aware that Bobby's best guess was that skin-to-skin contact was a factor in this mess. Thank the Lord no one touched them on their first visit. Dean had to hand it to his brother; they weren't getting second looks at all this time. Somehow, Sam had managed to assemble the right combination of brightly colored new garments and dirt so that they looked like affluent love children whod'd been partying for days. Another benefit of the college education he'd never get, Dean supposed.

"I still think it's a big leap from siphoning off excess emotion to doing some kind of funky physics experiment on a soul level," Dean had been saying all afternoon. "Unless this creature's been really smart about it, there aren't 100 bodies lying around here. This thing is sucking down these milkshakes made of matter and energy like nothing we've ever heard of, and it makes you wonder for what."

"To hear Bobby tell it, the festival planners were kind of asking for it. These holograms are apparently the perfect way for a spirit to manifest and control a crowd that's the least bit opened up to the beyond. I should have realized as soon as that girl told us about the virtual show this afternoon." Sam tried to be upbeat. "If we can only keep them from putting on tonight's show, maybe it will be easy to prevent more cases, assuming that this is not something that is growing like a virus in everybody after an initial contact."

That overlooked another big problem, in Dean's view. "And what about all the people who've got their chocolate all in somebody else's peanut butter and vice versa?"

Sam gave a helpless shrug and for the next few hours his only thought was how to prevent that night's virtual performance. It proved to be much more difficult than he would've expected. Earl the AV guy was the stubbornest bastard Sam had ever encountered.

The rather greasy, hatchet-faced man in an Iron Maiden t-shirt was a little knot of sullen in the middle of the peace and love bunch. Earl had recently started this hologram business with his brother-in-law, his cousin and some buddies from high school, and he refused to back out on a contract for fear of getting a bad reference. No amount of reasoning or threatening about anything from a plague to demonic possession would budge good old Earl from thinking about the reputation and financial future of Living Legends Entertaintment.

As their dad used to say, sometimes the human element was more unpredictable and dangerous that whatever entity you were fighting.

It didn't help that the authorities had offered the guy a huge bonus for every show that he put on while the supposed crime scene was on lockdown. Apparently all the vendors were being offered so much to keep things on an even keel that no one was about to forfeit that kind of money. Living off plastic as he and his brother tended to do, there was no way that Sam could come up with the amount of cash that would equal the thousands of dollars being handed out by some shadowy government agency.

FBI? Homeland Security? Whichever one was responsible for preventing riots, Sam supposed, but one thing he did know was when he was looking at an undercover agent. And he hadn't seen any so far.

Left to scope out the grounds for signs of demon activity, Dean received the news of the AV guy's stubbornness with resignation. Normally, they probably would've gone ahead and slugged the guy unconscious, but the chances of doing that without actually touching him were too slim for them to risk it.

"All right, so we move to plan B," Dean said over the phone in full general mode. "You sabotage the machine in some way, and I'll be in the crowd playing backup demon patrol." He wished he was the one with the technical know-how so he could avoid the squirming mass of contagious flower children.

Their experience had showed, however, that once you let the demon out of the bag it was hard to put back in, Sam reminded him. "If the deva-thing already has a bond with this place and it manifests without the projector, then Bobby says the spray bottle of colloidal silver should stick to the image enough to kill it."

"And if it does become completely corporeal, I put a silver bullet in poor Jimi's heart," Dean rehearsed bitterly. "And next step, I find the acid-head who conjured him up for giggles and give 'em a bad trip they'll never forget."

They separated and he headed straight back and to the beer stand, which was still plentifully supplied. It was getting weirder and weirder that the CDC hadn't shown up yet. The festival was going on as if there were nothing wrong.

These weren't exactly Dean's kind of people, but underneath the dreadlocks and the bodypaint they were just people. And like everyone else in America, they were living as if they weren't under the shadow of the apocalypse, or the threat of a demonic plague. Everyone except him, Sam, and a few other unlucky people in the know, that is.

The jugglers and the girls blowing bubbles, he didn't envy them, wouldn't want to spend five minutes in their company ordinarily, but he did feel an awesome responsibility to keep these people every bit as annoying as they were at this moment.

Always good to put things in perspective before a showdown.

"Hey, man, where's the beer coming from?" he asked the man behind the table as he ingested more liquid perspective.

"All I know is they keep trucking it in and leaving it for us along with a fat wad of cash," the guy, who seemed kind of drunk, slurred cheerfully. "I don't mind being stuck in a crime scene if they pay me like this. You should check out the free burritos they have in the food tent."

"I'll do that," Dean murmured as he plunged back into the sea of peole. He was scared in a way he usually wasn't on the job. He was going to fuck up somehow, they always did, but this wasn't patch it up with a bandaid and half a fifth material.

From what little he knew about souls, they were forever, and there's no way he wanted to be sandwiched together with somebody else for eternity. Especially some random white bread kid running on flower power. For people used to staying in some cushy laboratory, as he imagined a real CDC person did most of the time, the idea of cozying up with some infectious agent must be even less attractive to them, so maybe they were dragging their feet.

He felt something brush his sleeve and his heart stopped. But it was just a Frisbee. Will these people be so happy-go-lucky once they are shipped off to some containment facility? Wait—

Except they were already nicely contained.

Seeing the remote, wooded location as if for the first time, an awful thought came to him, and Dean was pretty cynical about almost everything. What if the CDC had already made its judgment about the situation? And decided that there was one sure, mathematical way to get rid of the unheard-of illness that had people folding into each other.

The Big Bang in reverse: they were going to leave people here until they fused and re-fused until there was only one really mixed-up body and soul left. And then they'd study that bastard to their heart's content.

Dean didn't put it past scientists or the government, or especially government scientists, at all. He looked around at the low-key gatheirng, and wondered what they were going to look like when the demon showed up and mushed the remaining bodies together like Play-doh. He imagined trying to pick someone else's Play-Doh out of his own soul-carpet forever and shuddered. His phone rang.

"Sorry Dean, plan B is a no-go," he heard Sam say.

"What do you mean? I thought Jimi wasn't supposed to go on until seven."

"I messed with the projector, the computer, and the power source, just to be sure. And that stubborn son of a bitch Earl tested his gear a moment ago and I saw Jimi sing the first few bars of Voodoo Child. We're dealing with some entity that brings its own juice."

"Damn it, plan C was my least favorite plan," but Dean was already bracing himself for the inevitable.

"There's every reason for it to work, you just have to hold until night falls. Remember you're ginger for the night; you're not even its type." Sam's pre-battle pep-talks didn't even convince himself.

"I don't want to be anybody's type at the moment," was Dean's parting complaint.

The next live band did no more for him in the previous one, but people were beginning to dance a little in a lazy way. It was as good a moment as any to take a couple powerful slugs from his flask. He had long since stopped hoping to change anything about the way he felt about things. Drinking was now a gesture showing the world how little he cared about it. Someone offered him a joint and he waved it away with his stupid cheerful mittens. Sweaty hands were an unwelcome distraction in battle, and he was wondering if he could chance airing them out for a second when he heard it.

Oh man, that _sound_.

Dean remembered the first time he heard this music. As kids they were stuck in a motel room on the 4th of July in some random town in Florida. Forbidden to go out on their own, it just so happened that they had a pretty good view of the fireworks from the balcony. He and Sam went out to join the other guests and somebody put this music on their boom box.

This version of the Star Spangled Banner touched him in a place he didn't even know he had. It was personal and alien at the same time, and the dingy setting melted away. Though it was a sticky hot summer day, he felt cold, refreshed, as if he were breathing air much purer than his lungs were used to.

Of course his little brother was too little and too Sam to know what he was talking about; they never would share the same taste in music. But at this moment, even though Dean knew he was looking at a digital wisp in the air, he felt a chill down to ihs bones: he was watching the flickering image of a long-dead genius left hand pulling those notes out of the guitar with an identical magic.

Dean looked around and saw that other people were similarly affected by the past appearing in the present. The hologram quickly moved on to another favorite, and people began dancing in earnest.

"Are you experienced?" asked the music.

Here and there people gave exultant whoops and yells. "Yeah!" "You bet!"

"Have you ever been experienced?"

People were dancing their frantic agreement. Dean started to get concerned. His experience at concerts was a little different; at Metallica gigs he'd never seen people move like this, as if their feet were wearing away at the ground.

He ducked away from the flailing arms he hadn't planned for when putting together his outfit. All he had was a surgical mask in his pocket, when what he really needed was a hood.

"Well … I … am," concluded the verse.

Dean was shoved sharply from the left and some well-meaning soul tried to grab him before he fell over. When his shirt ripped the and the fingers grazed the skin of his back, Dean's heart sank. He looked at the hands gripping his shirt. They belonged to a glassy-eyed young man with a wobbly smile who was the picture of everything Dean didn't want to be welded to forever.

He righted himself on his own power, but he felt wobbly. Dean been fearing being smushed together with some chick, but getting mixed in with some guy, and the _process_ by which he would be mixed in -

"Dude, you must be tripping balls," a male voice on his right said. "Your eyes are super-dilated. Why don't you go over there to the chillout tent? They've got orange juice and stuff to help you out."

Dean was still standing stock-still with horror, and then he felt a hand graze his neck as the guy on his right laughed and moved Dean's gaze toward the tent. He bolted off as quickly as he could, trying not to run into anyone else.

Fuck this! he was getting out of here. They couldn't fuse with him if they couldn't find him. The barricades weren't designed with hunters in mind. He could get out easy.

"Excuse me, while I kiss the sky."

An "ooh" went through the festival grounds and people looked up to the now-dark sky. The shape of the devil's trap heptagram shone in the darkness.

"Thank you, Sam," Dean whispered. He hadn't been sure his brother would be able to first, cut the complicated shape into a lighting gel, and second, get control of one of the stage lights to use it.

A melodic scream came out of the hologram's throat.

The crowd cheered back, not realizing the demon was off script. Not for the first time Dean thought how Demonology 101 should be taught in all colleges. The music continued, the kids danced their little hearts out, but it was as if the scene began to warp around the edges.

"Aren't you curious why you are unaffected?" The warm voice was suddenly at his side.

Dean quivered. "Oh fuck me, I am not talking to Jimi Hendrix." The specter was of a young, un-jaded man with wild hair, a little shorter than he, looking like the promise of a new age, circa 1967.

"I'd be delighted, but it seems there's nothing left of you," the familiar face said with a sensual twist to his mouth.

"What? Are you really Jimi?" He was _nice. _It would be hard to gank this conversational rock god.

"I've had many names, but it's safe to say that I predate the late lamented Mr. Hendrix by several millennia," Jimi replied. "I must say that after all I've heard about Dean Winchester, I'm not getting the hype.

"Most people," the creature gestured to the ecstatic dancers, "They have a little button, like a control that I can push just right and take them from zero to 'Wow!'" the demon roared like the singer he was wearing would have, "They have to let me in to work my beautiful magic, but who wouldn't want to—I'm always the best show in town. It's a simple concept—the spark of the divine in you recognizes itself in what I show it. A good time is had by all, I drink up some of the good juju—except for you, Dean. You look to be mostly drunk up."

Dean didn't know if it was the strangeness of it being JimimotherfuckingHendrix, or what he was saying about his deficiencies, but he was transfixed. He wanted to hear more about what was really wrong with him—no one ever wanted to talk about it, but he needed—"You need to pull yourself back, man, this thing is in your head," he told himself angrily.

Jimi laughed at his struggle. "Don't look at me, brother man, this is all about you. This must be what _you_ most want, 'cause that's my stock in trade. Someone telling you how worthless you are must get you going." Jimi's voice became smooth, hypnotic. "Look around -nobody wants to merge with lonely little Dean. Sad that those nice boys who began the bonding process with you won't be your soul mates forever?"

Dean shook himself. "Who? Shaggy and Shaggier? No thanks."

"That soul of yours is so banged up it's not enough to power one person—I don't know how you're dragging around," Jimi marveled. "It should be melted down for scrap."

A light suddenly shone in his face. "I tell you what: I'll make you the deal of lifetime. You could be part of my little finger." Dean scoffed at the left hand the creature held up. "Ah ah, that's as much as you can be, but don't worry: I'll have a special encore tonight—Purple Haze. And you can be a small part of that. You can be a tiny part of all your rock legends, living and dead, just like you always wanted. We can be a hologram of John Bonham when the original lineup of Led Zeppelin gets together for a reunion tour I hear is in the works—and then we can possess Robert Plant. He's a delight, I remember."

Dean felt a twinge. A while back, that would have been a dream come true. He was a shameless groupie, and being part of his favorite rock moments was something he was almost willing giving up his pathetic soul for. He felt himself drifting. Jimi's understanding eyes promised glamour, talent, music—

His phone sounded with Sam's ring tone.

Dean was in the grips of a strange lethargy, so that he couldn't move to answer it. Some part of his mind wondered why the demon would be paralyzing him if his signature plan was to get people all heated up by dancing into mass hysteria. "Sam," he said through gritted teeth.

"A Winchester-on-Winchester sandwich might be delicious, but I can see that you two wouldn't want to share." The thing wearing Jimi appraised him. "It might not be fair to your brother anyway. He already carries you too much. Let me carry you forever, Dean, no more decisions after this last one-just say yes," And then he sang a little, "Let me stand next to your fire."

Dean pulled out his totally un-badass spray bottle and misted the demon with silver. The glitter suited the rock star and he laughed with delight. "Your weapons are no match for my arsenal. Mine are more subtle. How do you exterminate a wish? Baby, you can't stake a desire. You used to know that. Don't be so judgmental of everyone else's buzz. You and Sam are already all up in each other's souls, why not let me complete the process?"

The phone was still ringing.

"So if you're just a garden variety ecstasy leach, how did you get into the downsizing business?" Dean tried to regain control of the situation.

Jimi treated him to a dazzling smile. "I had no idea how successful it would be. This was an experiment. I happened upon a couple that was just itching for union and I gave them a little push. That was quite a high, absorbing what they left behind, so I picked off a couple here and there at rock concerts and protests and Pentacostal church services—my usual gigs. And as I got stronger from feeding off everything that was left behind from these experiments, I started thinking." An odd expression came across the specter's face, a calculated air that didn't go with the rock star. "These are uncertain times for us all, what with your apocalypse and all being quite the downer for everyone. There may not be much ecstasy left once the Croatoan virus takes hold. I don't want to be brought down by a permanaent bad trip. So I thought, why not become an entrepreneur? Salt away some souls for a rainy day, and sell when the market is good? Stay in the lifestyle I'm accustomed to."

Damnation. Dean preferred his demons on the irrational side—when they started speculating with the soul market it couldn't end well.

"You really can't hope to keep dragging along like this. Come with me," the voice crooned insistently. "You've been downsizing for a long time. Come be a part of something great, something cooler than a square old apocalypse. Isn't that what you always wanted, Dean Winchester? We won't be spreading sorrow, only love, the true union that everyone wants, if you can dig deep enough. It's environmentally friendly, even—I'm reducing the first-world population."

"Except red-headed people? What's the deal?" Dean couldn't resist asking.

"They give me indigestion," Jimi said with a delicate grimace. "Souls have a taste you know—"

The ringing stopped, jolting Dean back to himself. "You killed Sam?" he burst out angrily, and had the presence of mind to face away from the crowd while he shot a couple bullets through the projection.

"I see you're not quite dead inside after all," the unharmed thing said. "That's good. Now I know how you want to go out—in an orgy of violence and blood. I can work with that," the demon's smooth voice said. "So that's what gets you going. But don't worry. I won't kill your beloved Sam. I'd much rather make a delicious Sam-and-somebody cocktail. I promise not to drink it all up."

There was a time when Dean would've been tempted. He liked a bit of the old ultra- violence a little too well sometimes, though he didn't like to admit it. When the fur was flying was the only time he felt different than the ghosts, these days, and he was about to say, "bring it on," and throw himself into the warrior's death he deserved.

But when he opened his mouth what came out was, "Actually to be honest, I just want to finish this off and split."

Jimi looked confused. "Nothing?" he spluttered. "None of this is tempting? You're about the farthest thing from a saint, so one of these options should tickle your fancy."

"It is, or would be, I don't know-how much longer is this gonna take?" Dean had a strong urge to be in front of the television set with his feet up.

The specter of Jimi standing before him quivered a little. "Jimi, are you all right?" he asked in concern as his idol seemed to falter in front of his eyes.

Jimi Hendrix stared fixedly at Dean as if seeing his worst nightmare.

To be looked at that way by one of your heroes—that was crushing.

To be looked at that way by a thousand-year-old demon –

Terrifying.

They stared at each other in mutual horror. And then Jimi imploded like a dwarf star.

Suddenly Dean was surrounded by the future yuppies of America again. The music was still going, but the hologram was gone. The sound system was playing Castes Made of Sand.

The spell was broken. Confusedly, everyone sat on the ground and began rubbing their feet, which must hurt like the blazes after dancing to the point of drawing sparks. Some removed their arms or mouths from people they had been caressing as if shocked and disgusted. A thundercloud of silent embarrassment hung over the grounds until it burst with one girl's tears, who shrugged off the arm that tried to comfort her. Everyone scattered. Predictably, there was a run on the beer stand.

All of this Dean took in while running to the projectionist tent with his phone to his ear.

"Sam? Sam, damn it, I don't want some Sam hybrid sitting next to me in the car." The half-and-half brother idea was somehow worse than thinking him dead. He was almost to the tent when the arm grabbed him. "Get off me! I just need to find—"

"Dean, Dean, it's me. " He saw his brother, his unadulterated brother, looking at him in alarm. "Are you hurt? You must have done something right, brother., though you took your time about it. I was afraid I was going to literally dance my feet off."

"Oh thank God, Sam," he grabbed hold of the same familiar features to make sure that they were real. The unusual emotion quickly turned to sheepishness and he pulled away. "When the phone stopped ringing, I thought you'd gotten pureed with some hippie."

"My phone battery died. But one did touch me." Sam reacted to Dean's horror. "You know I'm a magnet for granola chicks!" He waited for a gibe that didn't come. "Did you have any close calls? What killed it, by the way?"

"The winning weapon turned out to be colloidal silver, I didn't use it first off because it was altering my senses for awhile, like I was fighting with something in my head," Dean used the story he'd cooked up in the last minute. "And I got touched twice, but luckily I had no effects. No dancing, no—anything else—"

"Were they pretty?" Sam mistook his brother's reticence. "They were! We can go back; I'm sure it's safe now."

"They looked like two-thirds of the young Crosby, Stills and Nash," and Dean was grateful that his companion could be distracted by an attack of laughter.

But Sam couldn't be kept off the trail for long. "I wonder why you weren't affected at all. The red hair thing didn't seem to make a difference at that stage."

"All I know is, while you're soaking your feet, I'm going out. I need some regular people and real food and a girl who isn't named Clover or Moonbeam or some shit."

He stared straight ahead the rest of the ride to the motel. His brother seemed to be drained as well but he tried to make conversation.

"I wonder if that guy Earl will never understand what a pain in the ass he was tonight," Sam mused.

"I've developed a new hatred for the small businessman."

"Sorry you had to take out your rock hero, man."

"It was easy," Dean said quietly. "I must not have been as big a fan as I thought."

Dean was already stripping off that ridiculous outfit as soon as he had the key in the lock, so he was in the shower first. The red hair dye washing down the drain was a visual confirmation that he was getting clean in some way, but he wasn't comforted at all. With closed eyes he dried off what he hoped would be his regular-colored hair.

He forced himeslf to look in the mirror and see the hunter who'd just done the unheard of:

He'd ganked somebody just by being the miserable bastard that he was.


	3. Chapter 3

Oh yeah, there it was. His bar.

Even though he'd never been to this part of the Carolinas, Dean could recognize "his bar" wherever he was, in any town in America.

For a long time, he prided himself on being a drifter, on having no roots. On blowing through town in his slick Impala and moving on to the next adventure.

All these people with their lawnmowers and their time clocks and their church on Sunday, they seemed like they were the same. They stood still, for one thing. They weren't in California on Monday and Arizona on Thursday. And their lives were about growing roots.

At some point not too long ago Dean realized that he was the one standing still.

The endless string of burgers and Budweiser on tap, gas station coffee and chintzy motel rooms. They were home. They were the way he connected things so that everything was numbingly familiar.

Tonight, Sam had taken the car to some place where he could have a beer and listen to the sort of music Dean was already sick of from that folk festival. Sam hadn't even washed the dye out of his hair –probably to better get to know the locals. It was the younger brother's turn to use the motel room, so maybe Sam would bring someone back there. Who knows?

Dean installed himself on a stool and prepared to drink himself into reconciliation.

The girl behind the bar was Honey. They were always Honey. The woman with the short blond hair and the tank top who looked him over good the second Dean walked in the door, she was Latina-looking woman with the hoop earrings who'd given him a big smile was Sweetheart. The redhead who'd already told him her name but it had immediately fallen out of his head, she was Kitten. And so on. Dean had a list of endearments to call upon, but he knew once he'd gotten through Princess and Cutie and gotten to Gorgeous, Gorgeous was the sign that he'd had enough and should call it quits.

This night, he hadn't gotten that far. He'd paced himself, bought Kitten a drink and received a drink from Sweetheart. It was friendly. God, until Sam had told him his arid little threesome story he'd never realized how awful a word that was. Friendly.

He ordered another shot, though he'd switched back to beer an hour ago. That burn going down, it was unfriendly enough to remind you that you were still alive. It was a solitary burn and it reminded him of all those people, squashed into one, never to be alone again. Were they happy? The bar was beginning to clear out.

"You need to start heading off for home ports, Sailor. Do you need me to call you a cab?" the bartender asked.

"That depends, Honey, how far do you live from here?"

"You've got me mistaken for someone else," she said harshly. The friendliness that had grown up between them all night shattered.

"Oh yeah, and who would that be?" Dean asked, happily numb.

"Close your eyes, and I'll prove it," the woman said.

"All right, what's the test?" he said, gamely. "I'm a veteran, Honey, I can touch my finger to my nose no matter how drunk I am," and he did.

"What's my bra size?" she asked.

"What? I wouldn't-" he slurred with eyes still closed.

"You're the sort of guy who has every attractive woman sized up and filed away within 60 seconds of walking in a bar. I know your type. What's my bra size?"

"A B?" he guessed, squinting with concentration with his eyes closed.

"A full C, thank you very much." She let his eyes appraise her. "That's why I would never take you home, pretty as you may be."

"Because I didn't ogle you well enough? Maybe I forgot my glasses, Honey," The boozy, syrupy feeling was beginning to curdle a little and he was fighting to hold onto it.

"No, it's because you could have gone home with any one of five women tonight, and you didn't. That usually means that you've gotten to the point where you prefer whiskey to women, definitely a turn off. But I think there' s still a little something alive left in you yet."

"And you've got a problem with my little something getting together with your little something?" he risked.

"You chose me out of all the others because I was the easy choice. The no-choice. I was the person who would be here at the end of the night when the others left and you had to get your ass up off that stool and face life again."

She put down the dirty glasses she was holding and let down her hair. "I actually clean up real nice when I'm not wearing an apron and stinking of beer. I'm a little better than inertia. Yeah, I go to college. Now get yourself up and out of here." She grabbed a rag and brandished it like a weapon as she turned to towards the kitchen. "And if you're not gone by the time I get back I'll get the bartender to throw you out."

Dean left feeling like he had been caught at having several Cheez-its short of a box.

All the alcohol he'd drunk couldn't mute the rattling that was caused by all that extra space inside him. He felt it while he walked unsteadily back to the motel. He knocked but Sam wasn't there. Maybe he'd gone home with someone. Maybe more than someone.

That was the uncomfortable thing about Sam. He was so matter-of-fact about things and you never knew what he was going to say.

Whereas, apparently, even the waitress down at the local souse-hole knew exactly what he was going to say.

Dean sat heavily on the velour coverlet and took off his boots and shirt and then stopped. Damn, he'd been hoping someone would be doing this for him tonight. He closed his eyes and everything he'd been tamping down with drink came flooding up to his head.

"Please."

It was his inarticulate cry for something, for somebody to figure out what that something was and make him take it. He felt everything spin. An expert at gauging how much he'd drunk, Dean was sure he hadn't quite gotten to the room-spinning level of intoxication. It was hard to get there anymore.

Dean opened his eyes.

"You!" he spluttered. "You don't come when I call and then you pop in on me like that?" He felt for his shirt under the direct angel's gaze from Cas.

"You did call for me."

"Like 10 hours ago when we were planning our demon attack."

"No, just now. You were—searching—for something."

"I was looking for the strength to go on for another day, not for a non-human creature to act like a peeping tom to my despair." Dean didn't like to think of Castiel listening to his real prayers.

"I get no pleasure from seeing your pain, Dean," said the flat voice.

"Well, you have a funny way of showing it, because you're always around when I least want you to be."

"I don't think you should be alone right now. You're very upset."

"Don't go rifling around in here without my permission. It's rude."

"I haven't -" Cas began.

"Then it's so obvious how miserable I am? Great." Dean had lost his buzz entirely and hated the way reality felt.

"No, actually, I believe I am the only one who sees what you're going through. Perhaps better than you do yourself."

Thinking about being looked at through an angelic perspective always gave Dean the creeps. He felt naked and pulled the blanket around himself. "Oh, and what does someone who doesn't even have emotions know about being hopeless?"

"Maybe more than you think, except in a different way."

Maybe that made sense in angel-ese, but not to a human. "Well, tonight I was looking for someone who was the same as me, Cas. I want someone who is like me."

Cas looked surprised at Dean's admission for some reason. "I know you do. There's nothing wrong with that. No one in heaven has a problem with that."

"Good, it's nice to know I'm not going to go to hell for going home with some chick. Glad that you're part of a cosmopolitan outfit."

Castiel's brow furrowed and then he plunged into the subject that had brought him here tonight. "Yes, there has been some concern that you have not been happy."

"So now it's other people's business that I'm unhappy? I can't even be depressed for myself?"

Cas laid a hand on his shoulder and Dean flinched away. "Since when do you touch people? That's not even your hand. It's just skeevy. Physical comfort only works when it's just two people with no one in between."

Castiel had that look on his face that was like he was taking notes.

"Unless you're Sam," Dean added.

"What do you mean? You and your brother share-?" The angel struggled to understand.

"No! What's the matter with you, Cas? Today Sam happened to tell me about this time he and a guy friend had sex with this girl."

"And this bothered you?" The angel could usually parse human emotional reactions correctly as either positive or negative.

"It bothers me that he doesn't tell me things. Hell, you never tell me anything. I should be used to that in the people close to me."

The angel froze.

"What? What is it? Is someone coming?" Dean was stone-sober and vaulting off the bed with his gun in his hand.

"No, it's nothing. I should let you sleep and we'll talk when you're rested. Would you like me to take away the hangover you'll have tomorrow? It will be unpleasant."

"Do what you want." The alcohol rushed back into his body in place of the adrenaline and he felt lethargic. "At this point you can do anything you want to me. I don't care."

Dean flopped back on the bed.

Cas could tell Dean was having a hard time focusing on his face as he reached out and touched two fingers to his forehead. The delicate fabric of his friend's body and mind was now inert.

He decided it would be better if Dean was under the covers. He made a motion and the man was now in the bedclothes with the sheets pulled up to his chin. That wasn't how he normally slept. What was different? Oh, yes, the trousers. Castiel made another movement and the pants were lying neatly on a chair.

"Sam," came the gravelly voice behind him. The trench coat stood out oddly among the batik prints and scruffy jeans, and Millie, Sam's companion, obviously thought so.

"There's been a development you should know about."

"I thought you said you weren't a real cop," the girl said. "This guy looks like some kind of authority figure."

"You're right about that." From what Sam had learned about Cas's microexpressions, the look In the angel's eyes as he scanned the dancing crowd without comprehension said this was red alert urgent. "I actually need to deal with this. It was nice meeting you."

"Why isn't Dean with you?" Cas asked as they walked away from the noise.

"This isn't his kind of scene," Sam chuckled. "He's out at the local dive having his own version of a good time."

"I only wish that that were the case," Cas said, and his serious tone took Sam aback.

"This isn't about the apocalypse? This is about Dean? Is he hurt?"

"That's' the consensus, but there are some of us who disagree about what must be done about it."

"Stop being cryptic for once, dammit. Did someone jump him in the bar when his reflexes were slowed down?" This was a recurring worry for the younger brother.

"No, he's asleep. Physically he is fine. For now." The words seemed to come unwillingly out of the angel's mouth. "There is what you might call a price on his head."

Sam let out a low laugh. "We've known the whole demon world is out for Dean for years, Cas. Jeez, don't scare me like that."

"But you should be frightened. I would be if my brothers put what you might term a fatwa on me."

Sam sank down on a bench. "I knew they were upset with him for refusing to be Michael's vessel, but why would they actually want my brother dead? You people really do things like this?"

"You know that we have our eyes on the bigger picture." Castiel seemed confused by the hateful look Sam shot him. "But in this case there are many of us who do not agree about what this picture is. Dean is damaged from his time in Hell. You've noticed, I'm sure."

"So that's what this is about. They think he's damaged goods after they had him dragged out. What did they expect? He drinks too much. The fate of the world is at least partially on his shoulders. He's not himself. So they want to smite him for it?"

"They think he is guilty of one of the Deadly Sins. The eighth, specifically."

"Wait, there are only seven deadly sins, everyone knows that. The acronym is WASPLEG: wrath, avarice, sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony," Sam ticked off on his fingers. "People are committing them all over the place and I don't see your people doing a damn thing about all the dictators and gluttons."

"You may not be aware that there was an eighth deadly sin, one that we have stopped prosecuting, as it were, since it became so common as to become endemic. They call it modern life now," the angel gestured around him, "But for centuries it was known as the Sin of Acedia."

Sam snorted. "And this was me thinking that you people had realized that it was cruel to tell depressed people they were sinning."

"That was an error on our part, certainly," Cas said with that irritating understatement he was prone to. "I don't really think that they are going to start prosecuting people for spiritual dryness, but they are trying to make an example of your brother."

"At a time like this? I'd have thought they were all more interested in fighting the big fight. Besides, Dean's not exactly a stranger to most of the other sins – why are they focusing on this one?"

"I can't fully explain it myself, but Rafael, Michael, some of the most powerful in my world have taken a great offense to something. As you know, we don't tend to look back, so I would have expected them to move on to some other vessel and leave Dean to some other fate. But certain things have shown up on our radar, and they're saying Dean is a vector for something dangerous."

Sam laughed bitterly. "That's what you yourself thought about me and I'm still here."

"More than the other Deadly Sins, Acedia is powerfully contagious," Cas said urgently. "We've both traveled widely, Sam, and have been to places where everyone seems—dead inside, missing something. It seldom stays isolated to one person in a family; think about it. The old tales of Acedia besetting saints while they were in spiritual contemplation in the desert had it all backwards. Those people were chased away from settlements so they didn't dry out all the souls around them. Emptiness is catching; it has its own gravity. Don't you feel yourself having to fight against something in Dean?"

Sam didn't want to admit that this was hitting home. "Yeah, but, we've always had our problems. We deal with some dark shit on a daily basis. Part of me is always kind of sitting back and watching normal people, like that girl I was with, and trying to hold on to the simple way they have of looking at things. To feel warm for awhile."

"But you still come out and look for that warmth. And you find it for a little while," Cas pointed out. "The places where Dean goes he's trying to avoid just that, and he would quickly snuff out that warmth if he did." The angel's next words seemed to come with difficulty. "From what I've been able to tell, he's running as fast as he can from something, but that's different than being empty to the point of being like a black hole in society, as my brothers have depicted him."

"So you're saying they're calling Dean sort of like a Patient Zero," Sam finally grasped the scenario. "And the way your kind deals with problems is still the old 'If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out.'"

"That is not my position, even if such a thing were true" The words came sharply. Cas' capacity for chit-chat was predictably running low. "I'll tell you more when I know more. It's was important that you know about the threat. Call me if you think he's in danger."

Sam walked over to the car, the car that was one of the gods in his brother's pantheon. He was different since he was in Hell, of course. Dean had admitted that he'd discovered things about himself there that frightened him. Sam had to push away the awareness of his own darkness every day, and so his brother's pain was almost comforting in a way. Knowing that things weren't simple with Dean either.

He opened their motel room door and found his brother sleeping peacefully. So peacefully it must have been angel-induced slumber. Sam watched the slight smile that he must admit looked odd to him on his brother's face. Dean had had bad dreams ever since he got back from Hell.

Sam had learned to hold onto the smallest scrap of something good. He undressed and got into bed, glad for good dreams going on for the time being in the other bed.

Dean woke up the next morning feeling unusually refreshed. Didn't he go out last night? He felt around for where his pants were usually lying in a puddle near the bed. Did he bring someone home last night? He looked around but there was no smell of women's perfume, no condom wrappers, and Sam was asleep in his bed. He finally saw his pants on the other side of the room folded on a chair. That was strange. Sam had long since given up on picking up after him. Oh well, maybe he'd had a fit of tidiness overtake him while he was wasted last night. Because he remembered being drunk and getting called out by that waitress.

He groaned as his miserable encounter with the Jimi-looking demon came back to him, and then the awareness of his missing hangover struck him, and Dean groaned again at the idea that Castiel had had to undress him before he tucked him into bed.

"You couldn't have had that good of a time last night," was what he heard from Sam's bed. "You were all tucked in with the covers up to your chin like a good boy when I came in at almost 5. You're lucky I didn't bring anyone home."

"Yeah, there wouldn't have been enough beds for them. No, I was tired."

Dean picked up his Genghis Khan book and shut out his brother's odd look.

Cas had hoped for a little better from human psychiatric science.

He looked at the files he'd stolen from the boys' hospital stay but they contained no more answers than the first time he read them. "Narcissistic personality disorder." "Schizophrenia with paranoid tendencies and religious preoccupation."

Knowing what he knew about humans' tendency to dismiss everything that the ancient being knew to be very real, Cas thought the Winchesters weren't half as preoccupied as was good for them.

But this was new information. "Patient states that he has not had a relationship that lasted longer than two weeks in the last seven years." Apparently this was a very bad thing, signifying that Dean was incapable of any deep feeling for another person.

Cas threw away the papers in disgust. Things hadn't progressed very much in humans' ability to understand each other in the last 2000 years since trepanation was popular. At least drilling a hole in the head did sometimes dislodge a demon if that was the cause of the person's troubles. These doctors hadn't listened at all. The human that was his friend cared very deeply for others. He was too loyal, as a matter of fact. Castiel thought coldly that if Dean had been a little less devoted to his brother maybe they wouldn't be in this mess. Dean kept stubbornly saving sam, who was the vessel of Lucifer, a likable enough vessel enough, but still.

Yet that was what made Dean stand out to him back in the pit. His vitality shone out among the screams and the flaying even in the darkest place in the universe.

Cas thought back to the conversation he'd had with his brothers last night. Dean's killing of a powerful demigod with the power of the black hole in his being, well, Heaven had surveillance systems for events like that.

It was a huge power that could be used for good, and some angels were in favor of keeping Dean's melancholy as a sort of attack-dog on a leash.

Raphael and his crew were only too glad to "put him down for the greater good," as they said.

Castiel had learned too much about the way his kind thought to believe it was that simple. Dean had been the subject of scrutiny for years. Heaven had let him do whatever he wanted—he had a blank check for the stealing, the women, the indiscriminate violence. It was quite the show.

Dean had been going through the motions recently, but without his old flair. The new cynical Castiel contemplated: Humans are supposed to have excesses and passions

How else would angels get our vicarious kicks? Perhaps Heaven was anxious to get rid of Dean because he was no longer entertaining.

Castiel watched the man called Dean more than he wanted anyone else to know. How could he not be interested in this human after he pulled him out of perdition?

When he located his soul years ago, Dean was in the circle of Hell where there was nothing. Where there was no one.

Usually when the angel received the orders to fetch a soul from the cage, he obeyed with little curiosity. Things were more fluid in the upper and lower realms than anyone liked to acknowledge. It made him grateful for the clarity that came with being a soldier, and he did as he was told.

Dante had described hell as being laid out in a circular pattern, but to a multidimensional being such as himself, it was a small place of nearly infinite depth, which is approximately how one person's ability to suffer could be imagined. But there was a sort of geometry in it. Like a polygon approaching a sphere, suffering was a multifaceted thing that could scrape you on all sides with the additional torture of knowing it would never end.

Awarenesses didn't move geographically within this space. More like they spun the wheel to shift from one type of anguish to another, staying longer in one place than another out of differences in character or karma that he had never troubled himself to decode before now.

Then there was another torture. Another "ring," as it were. Where the anguish came from knowing that it had never begun. The individual was a mote, the first mote in the universe. A universe without God. Being totally alone-even the most irreligious person doesn't want that. The angel could barely imagine being a consciousness with no echo, no answering source or destination….

Castiel said a silent hosanna in praise of being one leaf of a majestic tree of Heaven.

He honed in on the soul he was sent for, which shone out among all the others in this place where the texture was slightly different than other regions of Hell. Cas had heard that the lack of touch was a torment even after death. That a soul needed contact with a memory or whatever their personal heaven was, or they would eventually go mad.

The angel accepted this as truth the way a blind man, blind from birth, accepts the existence of the color red after hearing about it long enough. He knew this to be the reason behind these people drowning in their own consciousness, gnawing on their own limbs or stroking themselves through the skin clear to the bone. He saw them talking to themselves in well-populated fantasies, saw them vacant and staring. Occasionally one of these last would be circulated through the other levels to try to ignite some spark, but if they couldn't be roused by any of the tortures, these souls would be scuttled off into some back corner of Limbo and forgotten.

Castiel watched the demon Crowley come through from time to time to tend to his charges. He'd come near enough that the sufferers could feel him.

Maybe say a word.

"Worm"

Or something sexually demeaning.

"You wish you could take it, slut."

The angel watched over the demon's shoulder as Hell's denizens railed against their invisible chains, wanting more contact at any price, anything better than being alone.

The man known as Dean Winchester had held out in other circles of Hell for a long time, but now he but was talking to himself and to imaginary friends like the rest. Heaven's intelligence had it that Dean wouldn't accept the crumb of affection Crowley offered him between lashes for a long time.

Until he did.

The demon expertly shaped the man by his need. Slowly, as he had done for so many, Crowley made Dean his lapdog, his pet, until the withdrawal of his attention was a torment worse than all others to this suffering soul.

Dean's flayed senses could tell when it was Crowley who was near him in the darkness. He strained for the demon among all other fiends coming at him with the whip.

"Why? Where did you go?" He howled for several eternities. Crowley made him wonder what he'd done to have his master's attention withdrawn.

So that when the torture-master did come back, Dean let him do anything

anything

that Crowley wanted.

The demon found Dean very innovative in his eagerness to please.

Oh yes, he had potential.

This was exactly how you move up in Hell, which ran on a currency of need.

This was the situation that Cas watched, for longer than he should have allowed himself, his own thoughts confused.

Then he remembered his job and grasped the man tight to draw him up out of perdition.

The look the man gave him, though.

No one had ever looked at Castiel like that. It may have been being drawn into the snug confines of a mortal's awareness, but that second it didn't matter where they were or that Dean was so far gone he would have looked at anything with gratitude for any sort of contact.

The angel had had close contact with a few other humans, and knew them to always be hoping for a personal savior, to a one.

But this, it was a broken, beaten thing lighting up with a surprisingly bright joy at the savior he'd never truly lost faith in. Castiel stepped into these shoes and it felt good. He was only a minor player, after all, and was all too aware of the small role he played in the Heavenly Host. For a moment, though, he knew he shined with a brighter promise than anything this tortured soul could have imagined for itself. The soul gravitated instinctively towards the warmth.

"Please," is all the man said with a disarming open-endedness. If he got a chance, Castiel would tell him to pray more specifically if he knew what was good for him.

The angel reached out and grabbed hold of the man's shoulder. To Cas's surprise, Dean didn't wince at chemical reaction from hellfire rubbing up against the angelic, but the human tried to get closer.

"Don't worry. I have you," the agent of heaven said.

And then they were away from the screams and the moans and looking together as if through glass at a small wooden box.

"You'll be all right now," Castiel said and turned to go. Mortals were always so glad to return to their fleshly homes, he figured this one would rush to rejoin his body and forget all about his savior. Angels are used to being forgotten.

"Don't leave me," this one said. There was that look again. It enveloped Castiel and he let it.

"You'll be fine. You've survived worse," was all he could think of to say.

He left the human to dig his way out of his own grave, as his survival instincts would impel him to do.

Castiel's mission had him keeping an eye on the human after that. When he saw the man on earth he was impressed again and again with his resilient soul. He'd dropped this seed alone into the world, and here it was a plant growing towards the sun, as it knew it should do. No one would suspect that its roots were planted in a forgotten torment and apparently drinking in the darkness quite nicely. The soul bloomed as a thin tissue of petals in the harsh terrain that was Dean's lot, and Castiel was glad.

This man Winchester doubted more than the average human, raged more than average. Loved with no care to the jagged edges. It was charming, this small creature's belief that he could change things.

At first Cas was amused at the way Dean made fun of him for not grasping the niceties of human relationships. It was impossible to resent, the way a human would find it adorable to hold a kitten and feel its little claws flexing. The warrior angel found Dean's antics distracting the way few things did from his purpose.

It didn't take long for the situation to change, Cas thought ruefully. His outspoken human began to be suspicious of his motives, demanding of more information, or just looking for a culprit—it was difficult for the angel to pin down the emotion that made Dean snap at his protector in what any angel would feel to be an unseemly manner.

The little kitten he'd been cradling so affectionately—it bit him!

"You'd best show me some respect, boy. I pulled you out of Hell and I can throw you right back in."

The angel observed his own human vessel's neurons firing around him like a cloud of angry bees, and then it hit him—he was angry. At a kitten! It was absurd. Castiel quickly fled from this unwelcome stickiness that humans generated, and tried to think no more about the moments he'd spent with Dean in Hell. For a long time, he thought the man was doing the same.

But much sooner than anyone else, Castiel had begun to suspect that some part of Dean had been scarred by the last circle of Hell he'd resided in. The angel Crowley had branded Dean's soul with what the man had come to know as the master that would come for him eventually. On some deep level, Dean didn't feel he possessed his own fire—he only felt the spark of rejection.

All that tail-chasing and self-destructive behavior—only someone who had seen Dean begging for a demon's notice would grasp that the man was caught in an infinite loop of masochism. He was deprived of deprivation. He needed someone to care enough not to care, to short-circuit this recursive cycle his passions were caught in.

Castiel wished it didn't fall to him to make this man, this friend, to get his own flame under control or face an angelic wrath that would put his human conflagration to shame.

It was sure to be messy. Cas hated that.

Making full use of his angelic perspective, Castiel tried to think of the man he was aware was driving through Kentucky at that moment as something cuddlier than a broken warrior with a foul mouth. He attained the vision but it soon sprouted claws.

Cas knew he was going to be scratched in the process.


	4. Chapter 4

Sam didn't even like Mongolian barbecue, but he would sit in front of a plate of anything if it meant his brother could have a few moments of distraction from his troubles-in this case a confused conversation in broken English about Genghis Khan.

They'd been on the road for two days. Dean had driven for most of it and refused to stop to get some sleep. Increasingly, his brother had two speeds: full throttle or off. Their next gig was a good old-fashioned haunting, nothing on as big of a scale as the job they left behind in the mountains, but Dean was in his silent, one-with-the-road persona much of the time.

When he finally allowed Sam to take the wheel, the younger brother thought it was a good time to give the speech he'd been rehearsing all this time, all about the angel fatwa and the eighth deadly sin.

"Are you awake, Dean? Say something."

"What do you want me to say?" came the surly voice beside him. "It's the same old shit, but with wings. Wake me up when we're closer to Missouri."

And that was all Sam could get out of him on the subject. Sometimes he would look over and find his brother awake, but sitting so still it felt like he was alone in the car.

It was Sam who had spent the day researching their case, because when he got the call from his brother to meet him at the restaurant for lunch he found out that Dean had been researching his obsession instead.

"Can you believe these guys all share DNA from the Khan?" Dean said excitedly about the family that ran the restaurant. If this is how was brother wanted to play it—compartmentalizing the hell out of things-Sam didn't think he was the one to judge.

It should have been a straightforward case. Famous last words, Sam knew. But they really did have it all under control. Sam had been firing salt rounds while Dean smashed up the china cabinet that held some antiques that the ghost had been holding onto. He tossed his brother, the veteran hunter, the gun, so the taller Winchester could jump on top of something and pull down an iron chandelier.

When Dean froze. The gun clattered on the floor out of his reach, scattering the salt line in the process.

The ghost came right at him, entered him, and left him, but only after throwing him around like a rag doll and leaving him with a broken rib.

It was all under control soon enough, but the two brothers returned to the motel and looked at each other in silence. It was an embarrassing mistake, and Sam wanted to let his brother decide how to deal with it.

When Dean took a deep breath before speaking and grabbed his side in pain, Sam knew they couldn't sweep it under the rug, which was the Winchester way.

"Is it going to be the ER, or an angel doctor?" Sam gestured to his brother's hand on his ribs.

"Cas makes house calls." Dean began to pray.

"I was afraid of this sort of thing," Cas said, appearing next to the bed. "Acedia can begin to affect the organism as well. Some people move more slowly or experience occasional paralysis."

Sam was irate. "You let me take him into battle without telling me that? In our line of work that can get both of us killed."

Dean was less upset. "It's been bothering me for days – that must be why I froze up in front of the deva thing. I couldn't even reach for my phone."

"I had to do some research," the angel replied a trifle testiiy. Right before they called he'd been working his way through a an charismatic church at prayer, trying to familiarize himself with what he could see of those souls that were conveniently opened up for viewing.

He raised a hand towards Dean'a forehead. "Don't wait up, Sam. We'll be away awhile."

"You never usually take him somewhere else to patch him up." Sam was truly annoyed at this most recent instance of Cas selectively informing him about something important.

"I'm going to try and get to the bottom of your brother's problem, which, as you can see, is dangerous in any number of ways. It will be messy. Dean will find it unpleasant." And before the Winchester in question could have a say in the matter, they were somewhere else entirely.

"Where are we?"

"I have never actually brought a human here. It may be a little disorienting for you, being between dimensions like this." It was his private, interdimensional room, a place to be away from the politics of heaven and the preoccupations of earth. He watched the human's face alternate between panic and curiosity at their being suspended with no gravity, no scenery, no nothing. The man was floating without pain, at least, his broken bone mended, and so the angel turned his conciousness to the matter at hand.

"Take off your belt."

"What?"

"Put it between your teeth so that they don't shatter. I find dentistry tiresome."

Dean did as he was told, the taste of leather somehow familiar.

"You will find this unpleasant."

He removed the belt. "You keep saying that. What are you going to do?"

The angel searched for the right word. "Jump starting a car is the best analogy."

With serious misgivings, Dean replaced the belt in his mouth. Instead of the invasive procedure he expected, the angel folded him in his arms.

He was going to protest, when he felt the body next to his vibrating like a jet engine. Sheer power.

Dean was transported back to the one time he'd had a motorcycle. His dad had stolen a Harley to get away from some monster, and his dad let him keep it while he was mending a few injuries sustained in the fight.

It was a rare time when his father paid enough attention to him to show him how to tune it up, helping him discover how much love you could find in a machine. Dean remembered riding without a helmet, and discovering that that's what country roads were for on moonlit nights – no monsters necessary because you were already riding the danger, between your legs, faster, faster –

"I think that's it," a masculine voice said.

Dean did not have an orgasm.

Every cell in his body had an orgasm.

He opened his eyes while the ecstasy was being wrung from him and saw an expressionless male face watching him with the barest glimmer of curiosity in the eyes.

The oddnes of it brought one last surge and Dean collapsed into the nothing that was somehow holding him up.

The belt had been spit out long ago. "If that's your definition of unpleasant, Cas, I don't want to know what you call pleasant," he said weakly to break the silence.

He was floating in space with a sticky crotch in front of another man and the sensations still coursing through his body were stubbornly positive.

"It was a sort of kink in your energy field, but I thought you might feel conflicted about the experience."

True enough, Dean's mind and body did not agree about what was happening, so he fell back on the sort of rationalization that had allowed him to put many a drunken hook up behind him.

"I'm going to try to think of you as a multidimensional being who used a dude-shaped scalpel to cure me." Too phallic. He tried again. "I'm thinking of you like a sunbeam right now, Cas, so let me have my afterglow," he finished with a surprising cheerfulness.

Cas looked relieved. "It was something interfering with your ability to take pleasure in life. We'll just have to see if it holds," and Dean was back in the motel.

He felt a little jolted. Not like he was expecting a cuddle afterwards, but being dumped like a floozy on the motel bed after what counted as the single best nonsexual sex-like experience he ever had was confusing.

He answered his brother's questions with monosyllables while heading to the bathroom to be alone. Oh who cares-he felt great. He stripped off and took probably the most pleasurable shower of his life. Dean hadn't realized how fucked up he was, but like some leak had been fixed in his very core. As long as Cas didn't make a huge deal out of it-and he doubted Cas even grasped the potential for ridicule in the case of a staunch heterosexual coming in the arms of a man-like thing-Dean could hopefully concentrate on feeling like himself for a change.

Castiel hoped that it took. He really did. So much so that he convinced himself that Dean would be using his newfound wellbeing to find a woman the next night. It had been quite some time since he'd had a sexual liaison, by his own admission.

It was with a genuine dread that he heard the call.

"Cas, now I lay me down to—shit, that doesn't sound right. Dammit, Cas, we need to talk,"

The angel had to force himself to wait a little longer than usual before responding, seeing that that's what the situation was going to demand...

"Yes." he said flatly, wishing there was another way. "Is there a problem?"

The elder Winchester was fidgeting on the edge of the bed. "I felt great, Cas, all day, I wanted to thank you. Something's been eating away at me and I didn't even know how deep it had gotten. But—"

"But it didn't take."

"Yeah, about an hour ago I started to feel—bad—in some way I can't explain."

Castiel took in the man's panic calmly and prevented him from speaking further for both their sakes. "It won't be necessary. I got a view of the issue last night. It's what you would think of as hammering out a dent in one of your car parts. It will take a little effort but we should be able to fix it."

Dean looked relieved. "That's great, Cas. Sam is out for a few hours. Let's have at it."

The angel was staring at his shoes.

Dean really looked at his friend for the first time. "Jeez, this is actually much harder on you than me. I guess I was keeping my eyes closed last time and haven't been thinking about how you're not used to being close to people," he said in a rush of sympathy.

"This isn't about me," Castiel was looking over his head.

"No, here, let me show you a little bit of how it's supposed to be," the man Dean said in one of those warm impulses he was prone to. "If I was with a chick, I'd take off my shirt," he said, following suit.

"It's not necessary," the angel said, looking away awkwardly. "Your torso is not the operative factor here, that I can see."

"I know I'm not a hot babe, but you're a sunbeam, you don't care." Dean had spent the whole day rationalizing and he was getting pretty good at it. He took the hand that sort of belonged to Cas and put it on his bare shoulder. "People like getting naked, it's like a sharing thing."

The next thing he knew he was enveloped in that throbbing energy. This time he didn't care. He rode it, tried to prolong it, enjoyed having his shirt off, unbuttoned his jeans, rubbed against the other body he could scarcely feel through the fiery energy.

"Oh god oh god," he sobbed. He had a fistful of Cas' hair and was wrapped around his body like a monkey.

"I'd rather not talk about him now."

"Holy Christ, Cas, that must've taken that time. I feel like you dunked me in light."

He flopped backwards. "Did you?" he asked shyly.

The angel felt around where there was some slight interest in his pants that was not reflected in his face. "Evidently not."

"Do you ever, I mean, mess around with yourself-that self?" He and Sam had always wondered. He said yes, Sam disagreed. "Wait, he's not watching this-this- is he?" Dean said of the vessel.

"That sounds uninteresting," Cas replied. "And no, I've been sure to put him to sleep for your-treatment."

"You mean you don't enjoy this at all?" Dean exclaimed, his mood shifting again, beginning to get indignant.

"I would think that would be uncomfortable for you," Castiel remarked mildly.

"Yes, well it would," Dean stammered, "but it doesn't seem right somehow for you to be so clinical about it. There's nothing you want to try on any person?"

The angel was blushing furiously.

"Wow, if you're afraid to say it, now I'm intrigued. What's your fantasy?"

Castiel looked hopeful. "I would like very much to touch your soul."

"My soul," Dean spat. "You mean the rest of me leaves you cold and you're only interested in grabbing the real goods. Now I know what chicks are talking about when they say they feel objectified." He pulled on his shirt hurriedly. "I bet you'd feel the same if you fondled my elbow as anything else."

"Most likely," Cas answered. He observed the man in front of him. "You're offended."

"Damn right! There's 8.75 inches of me that I don't find so interchangeable."

"I'm sorry," the angel said, and was gone.

Pray as he might, Dean couldn't contact the angel the next day, or the next, or for a few weeks after that, until he got pissed and quit trying, but Castiel was watching the man's growing agitation from afar. He'd been hoping to avoid a true re-enactment of the man's trauma, but it was engraved so deeply onto his soul there appeared to be no other remedy.

All Dean knew was, things got bad. It was worse than he'd ever felt it, this hole eating away at the center of him. Just like in Hell, it was the knowledge that even the pain and the horror was a flimsy mockup. It was random, it had no substance, but it hurt anyway.

There was one thing thankfully different than Hell. Booze. When Dean was downstairs, he'd dreamed of something that would soften the edges and take the pain away, even for a little while. He'd had an imaginary friend—Betty the bottle. He talked to her about all the fun they would have. Alcoholic escape became a quasi-tangible person for him. So for months now he had a flask with him wherever he went,. Sometimes he clutched his pocket, fearing that this was really Hell, and then he relaxed feeling it there. He slept with Betty in whatever form he had her in. He woke up from his many nightmares, and only calmed to find her there tucked in the pillows.

"I'm happy to say that I don't give a shit what you think," he slurred one night to his brother, who had been watching him with open concern.

"I was just planning what to get you for your birthday," Sam said. "Whether they giftwrap donor organs, because at this rate I'm going to be getting you a liver for your present."

"Stick a candle in that shit and I'll make a wish," Dean laughed. "Except make sure it's not haunted first. Damn that would suck, having an unquiet organ raising hell inside you."

When he wasn't drunk he was mean. It was like watching someone else kind of mean. Dean had always been kind of bitchy with his brother, but now he was left watching himself rip into Sam and was terrified the only person he trusted would decide he'd had it. But Dean was powerless to do anything about these mood swings. The only thing that helped was hunting.

Sam had to put his foot down about how much of a release he found out of ganking whatever was handy. Now that -that was better than Betty. It was some kind of Zen moment he'd never felt so deeply. It got him off so much it scared him. They'd had to bring back a practice he'd set up for when Sam was struggling with his demon blood habit and was liable to kill things just because. The "un-safe word," they called it: he was only allowed to kill somebody if Sam was there and said the word. It had to be something unusual enough that he wouldn't get confused, so Sam chose "avocado."

If he'd been in the mood for laughter, he would've laughed his ass off watching demons get this "Where the fuck's the guacamole?" look in their eyes before he ganked those mothers to the hell he felt like a second skin clinging to him at all times.

Finally one night Sam stepped around the 100-proof puddle he was on the floor, because he couldn't make it to the bed, and said, "I don't care what you think, Dean. You may have had some falling out with Cas, but you don't get a vote. I need you, Hell, a lot of people need you. This just isn't the time to lose your shit. After all this is over, if we live, I promise, you can take a vacation, I'll drive you to the nearest psych ward, whatever you want. You've gotten through worse, Dean, and if Cas can give you one of those angelic booster shots that will get you through the next few weeks, then at this point, I'm all for it."

Dean hated himself for the bolt of hope that went through him at the name. "Whatever man—"

Finally, when Sam called him to say that his brother was on the verge of falling apart, Castiel appeared before the Winchesters.

"This may take quite some time," he said over the almost-catatonic Dean to his brother, and spirited his friend to his private room.

The process only needed to take time in Dean's awareness, so the angel hid him away from time for a little while. Just like in Hell, Dean needed to float, he needed to sink. What to the angel seemed like just a few minutes to the human's mind were years, years of no one.

Dean's body writhed and he rent his garments and begged for some contact, any contact. Unlike Crowley, who had used a whip or a boot, Castiel just stood there occasionally and let the man gibber and beg for the merest notice. And then he would withdraw to some place just outside of the human's awareness.

Castiel hated following Crowley's playbook so much he almost ripped the veil from the man's eyes several times, but as an angelic operative he knew that sometimes pain was the price paid for righteousness.

The clothes had long since been torn off by hands seeking to comfort the skin that cried out, the erection stood out like a scream that couldn't be quieted. It took ten minutes.

Step up, "please don't go," step back. Repeat.

When he saw the being that Crowley had said, "had potential," the shivering beast, he stepped up again.

"Please," Dean said.

That clarity out of the animalistic cries. It was like the first time. It moved him.

He gathered what was left of the man up in his arms. And something startled him. He felt the man's soul on the surface of his skin. Every bit of him was right there for the experiencing. He ran his hands over the naked form while the man sobbed in response. Castiel had never been that close to a soul, enveloped in it. A tender power.

The man's lips closed over his. "Yes," was the shape they made over and over. The tongue surprised him even more than the lips, these bits of flesh danced and he heard a groan that he couldn't locate as coming from either of their throats and so must be from both.

He had just enough presence of mind to cover the man's eyes.

No one had ever taught him what to expect.

The man was sobbing and laughing and kissing his borrowed face, his stolen hands, while stammering something that took some minutes to resolve itself into regular speech.

Yes, Castiel answered with bittersweet inflection. Yes, I did.

The idea that they would have thrown out two completely dissimilar flares a universe apart was enough for the man, and he relaxed in his arms.

The angel healed the burns that the man obviously didn't feel from the explosion of energy and sent him to sleep in his home, the dimension bordering on collapse.

Dean had the strangest dream. He was in Hell, which was, well, Hell, but he felt better than he had ever felt in his life. It must be Hell, because he wasn't used to crawling around in tattered clothes anywhere else. But he felt great, like how you would feel if you'd been rolling around with a bunch of puppies or after a day at the beach, but times a hundred.

While his dreaming brain was trying to grasp all of this, he heard a voice.

"That was really poor form, I'll have you know."

"Zacariah, get the hell out of my dream," Dean snapped, trying to hold on to the good feeling while holding some scraps of clothing over himself.

"It won't do any good." Zacariah's gaze looked past the bits of cloth. "Any angel can see you've been ridden like a cheerleader in the back seat of a Chevy. You don't look like you put up much of a fight, and here you've been playing hard to get all this time. I knew you were a cock-tease."

"I don't know what you think you know, but I know it's not true," and he it said with enough assurance that it must make sense, "I didn't give Michael my promise ring, and I sure as hell didn't give him anything else."

"That's not the suitor in question, though he was mighty pissed when he found out someone else popped your soul-cherry." Zacariah said with a leer. "It's been a joke in heaven, Cas's obsession with you." Here Zacariah did a little earnest-clumsy-smoldering mime of Castiel, and Dean realized that it wasn't just that his friend wore his human vessel badly-he was a kind of joke in heaven, too. He felt a stab of sympathy, and then returned to Zacariah's taunts-"but we never thought he would cock-block an archangel."

"Cas?" Dean repeated dumbly, registering a warm surge accompanying the name with horror. The intense, alien pleasure he discovered with the angel recently was such a game changer he'd been able to keep himself from thinking about it until Zacariah crudely confronted him with it. "He rode me, like, vessel rode me?"

"And no angel will lay a finger on used goods again," Zacariah shook his head. "You really must have not wanted to be a vessel for Michael, but I hate to tell you, kid, he'd already set his sights on someone else, so you gave it up for nothing."

Dean's mouth got stuck open with all of the retorts that came gushing up his throat, among them, that Zacariah was just jealous because he obviously didn't have a very good time marking his balding vessel. Since when did he think of himself as a hot piece of angel bait, he started wondering….

Then he woke up. Alone. A quick inventory revealed not a mark on him, but that didn't matter with angels! Cas could've ridden him in more ways than one and erased the memory and the evidence. God Almighty! Why did he ever start messing around with angels? "We have work for you to do" my ass!

His ass indeed!

They apparently did treat him like a piece of tail in Heaven. Dean felt filthy, like he'd been used for some perversion he didn't even understand by people he'd expected something better from. This was all against his consent! He was going to kill Cas!

A memory of a wave of pleasure licked at the edges of his awareness and he collapsed onto the sheets, but not before he had a wonderful idea.

Dean arranged for Sam to go out and come back to compare notes on their current case. Instead, he busied himself with a conjuring ritual, surprised that cutting his hand for the blood didn't hurt as much as usual.

"Oh my, Dean, the rumors are true. It's all over the airwaves by now." The angel appeared before him with a grin.

"Jesus Christ, Balthazar," Dean said, his cheeks flaming. "Don't you angels have anything to talk about besides who jumped who without their permission?"

"I hate to break it to you, friend, but you had to say yes in some language or he wouldn't have gotten a home run, so you can't blame it all on Cas," the angel said. "And given how heaven had its own department for arranging your getting together with Michael, I'd say this is worth the mention."

"Listen, I don't really want to talk about this with you. I want to talk about my brother. I want you to do him, or whatever it is you things do to mark someone so no other angel will go there."

Balthazar's face was surprisingly conflicted. "I would be honored, but in all candor, this won't accomplish anything other than making your brother question his sexual identity."

"Then why did Zacariah say Cas cock-blocked the archangel, and no one would ever touch me again?"

"They probably_ won't_, but it's not that they_ can't_. You know all that stuff in the Bible about not lying with your neighbor's wife? It's not because you can't or won't enjoy it, it's because the average angel finds it unpleasant to bond with someone who already bears the 'scent' as it were, of another angel. They prefer lamb over mutton, but some of us actually like mutton very well indeed. Not too gamey at all," Balthazar leered democratically.

Dean was outraged. "You're saying my soul is 'gamey' now? That Cas made my soul stink like an overripe fruit for those in the know?"

"Who are the angels you see most often?" Balthazar ticked them off on his fingers. "Rafael etc you want to see less of; me, I've told you I have a sophisticated palate; and Cas won't be able to tell at all. Or at least, it will be anything but unpleasant for him."

Dean felt miserable again. "So you're saying Satan won't care whether you've done Sam or not, he'll bust on in there anyway given half a chance."

"Yes, sadly for Sam," Balthazar said, "and for me, because I have no excuse to mark him. Actually I would be opening myself up to great danger, because my bonding with Sam would mean I was bonding with any future angels he opens himself to."

"I don't get it," Dean shook his head. "You're all about the tail, but Cas said that you angels don't get off on the actual act."

The libertine angel chuckled. "He told you that? More evidence that angels need sex ed. Cas is no more worldly in our world than in this one. He hasn't the slightest idea what he's doing. We're jamming a huge entity into a small fleshy container and the inexperienced don't know how to make the fit more comfortable. Imagine a creature whose hand has a hundred fingers, trying to fit into a human glove. I could give you some hints on you how to please him," he purred.

"There will be no more pleasing," Dean shot back, and then gave a glare at the admission that there had been some in the past.

"Be that as it may, if you don't want a demonstration, there are some things you should know for your own safety," Balthazar stated. "For future reference."

Sam came back. "Have you been doing research?" he asked, viewing the remnants of the ritual.

"Yeah, it didn't pan out," Dean said. "I'd been hoping there was a solution to your whole Lucifer-wearing-you-to-the-prom problem, but it was a wash."

"Who'd you call?"

"Balthazar. I'd—heard—about this thing where you get marked by one angel and then none of the others want to touch you. But it's just a myth."

"That's too bad. That would be the answer to both our problems." Sam sank down on bed.

Dean realized guiltily that his own problem was solved. His archangel problem at least. How would he explain that? "I kind of think they are moving on from me anyway."

Sam studied his face. "You look good, man. I get down on him sometimes, but Cas really does come through. He's a true friend. Hopefully heaven really is going to ignore you for a little while. You just want what I want-to save people and maybe not be miserable every second of the day."

Dean was unhappily aware that he had attracted a great deal of attention with his couple of extended brushes with ecstasy. "You know what me feeling good means," he said, jumping up and fixing his hair before the mirror with an assurance he didn't feel.

"That some lucky lady gets to share the wealth," Sam supplied. "We leave early tomorrow, remember."

"Yeah, the preacher gig. I know," Dean said disinterestedly. "If it's a friend of Father Gregory's, I promise not to get too wasted. Don't wait up."

That night, just like next job, began to show Dean that ignoring something isn't quite the same as forgetting about it.


	5. Chapter 5

"Sorry, Father Tim, I've never heard of a possessed person who reads the Bible," Dean said sorrowfully, sad to let go the fine baked goods that tended to come with the preacher territory. He helped himself to another piece of strawberry pie. Damn, these Kentucky church ladies could bake.

"Maybe he's not possessed. It could be another kind of spirit activitiy," Sam suggested. "We should just take a look. That level of rage and violence alternating with complete clarity like that? It doesn't sound like your average psychotic break."

"We can't tell for sure that he's lucid if he doesn't talk," Dean pointed out.

"The Bible passages this young man picks out are no coincidence. Clearly he's saying that he forgives someone, or is trying to," the minister said.

"It's weird that it's not the other way around," Sam mused. "There's no harm in looking."

"Sunday's my big day. You boys let me know how young Soren strikes you."

"I hope he doesn't," Dean said. "He sounds like he's got grade A crazy running through his veins."

It wasn't much to go on, Dean thought that evening and again the next morning. One distraught lady making an offhand suggestion does not a case make.

A seventeen-year-old boy had gone on a violent rampage, beating up some strangers at multiple sites around town before he was caught pummeling his best friend, sixteen-year-old Eddie Prewitt, almost to death. They'd kept him a few nights in county lockup before the community's call for swift justice had to be postponed by the recognition that the kid was off his rocker.

"Literally bouncing off the walls and speaking in gibberish," was what Father Tim had been told to expect. The local religious leaders had some kind of rotation set up so that they could minister to prisoners, and it had fallen to the Episcopal priest to visit the jail on the Thursday afternoon when Soren Mathesen was in the clink.

He'd been given the warning by Mrs. Ella Prewitt, the busybody wife of a popular nondenominational preacher who was, some said, the real leader of the congregation and her family. "I went to distribute some of those pocket Testaments," Ella told him over the phone, though Tim was quite certain it was to get an up-close look at the boy she'd known since birth who had taken it into his head to beat her son to a pulp. "There's something evil inside that boy, mark my words; he was posseseed by something dark. Don't get too close."

Tim had dismissed the woman's words as a reaction to her son's attack, but when he saw the good-looking teenager look up from reading his little New Testament all cuffed and shackled, the boy gave a polite two-handed wave. He didn't talk, but pointed to various passages and looked at the priest expectantly until he explained the Christian call to turn the other cheek, and so forth.

Tim had spent about half an hour with the young man, when all of a sudden he seemed to be thrown across the room by an invisible hand. That's how the priest had described it, and from what Sam and Dean could see, Father Tim was much like Father Gregory in that he spoke simply and without overstatement.

Shaken, the priest backed away and left Soren to his ravings. It was the sudden transformation that recalled Mrs. Prewitt's words about possession, and he'd dug out the number his late friend gave him long ago with the instruction to call it if he came across something that truly didn't make any sense.

The Winchesters pulled up to the psychiatric hospital wearing their suits. "Is this smarmy enough?" Dean asked his brother, trying on a smile.

"It made me nauseous, so yes. How about mine?"

The two brothers clutched a Bible each and brandished their smiles around until they'd gotten admittance to the ward housing Soren. "You came at a good time, Reverend," the pretty nurse said. "He's in one of his quiet spells."

"It's Brother, Sister," Dean said unctuously. "Brother David and Brother John."

Flustered, the nurse patted her hair and left the two handsome ministers do the Lord's work, which in their case meant sussing out if there was a demon at work.

Soren was wearing a restraint jacket but nodded his head when they came in. The brothers took turns trying to diagnose him while the other did his best to chat about pious topics. There was no EMF. Obviously there was no hex bag because the kid had been searched up and down by the jailers and the hospital staff, and they knew from experience that the latter were the more thorough.

Other than not being able to talk, the kid seemed strangely fine.

"Tell me, did you do these things? Did you hurt those people?" Dean tried the direct approach.

The patient looked confused. "Did you mean to hurt them?" Sam clarified, and the teenager shook his head. "Was it like you were watching someone else controlling your body?" The boy nodded his head vehemently.

It had to be a demon after all. To make sure, Dean splashed him with a little holy water, but the boy just blinked.

The hunters stared at each other in surprise. Something was off. Though they tried for the next few minutes to get more information from Soren, he seemed to be drifting away. All of a sudden they witnessed what Father Tim had seen—a good-sized seventeen-year-old boy skidding across the room and beginning an unearthly howl that echoed in their ears as they walked down the hall and out onto the street.

"Even a Jekyll and Hyde situation wouldn't have had that kid flailing like that," Dean admitted. "Do we know of any Bible-reading demons out there?"

"Who are immune to holy water," Sam pointed out. "There's something there. Maybe Bobby can help."

The two brothers spent the next couple of days chasing down leads with their uncle's assistance, but nothing panned out. They were making Father Tim go over his first impression of the boy for the hundredth time, when Dean asked, "What denomination did you say this Prewitt woman was?"

"The Holy Spirit Tabernacle is nondenominational. Her husband is a genuinely nice man, though not very worldly. It's the wife whose organizational talent helped build that parish into the biggest one in town, though he is a truly inspirational preacher."

"So nondenominational usually means people shy away from all the hellfire and brimstone, right, and leave that to the evangelicals and whatnot?" Dean asked.

Sam caught his drift. "Most of the time, we're the ones convincing people that demons exist, not the other way around," he explained to the priest.

"You know, it was a little strange coming from her. Reverend Prewitt can't see the bad side of anyone, but you're right, it's not the kind of thing they focus on at their church. I knew some about what Gregory was into, and even then it wasn't the first thing that occurred to me."

They almost gave up on Dean's hunch when no one could find any connection between the woman and the boy except hearing over and over that she was his second mother.

"I'm getting something," Sam said excitedly from behind his laptop. "All of these lucid moments the kid has, there's a pattern."

"Besides the Sunday morning thing?" Dean asked. He was beginning to get stir-crazy and wanted to get back on the road for some reasson. "We decided it was some kind of devout spirit or something. Maybe it goes to a ghost church at that time every week."

"Or his handler goes to church."

Dean's mouth dropped open. "It's like a voodoo thing, someone controlling him through a doll or a piece of hair. We should've seen that. And the handler is Mrs. Prewitt?"

Sam spun around the laptop. "Choir practice Thursday afternoon from 4-6:00, right when Father Tim was visiting the jail. Wednesday evening services, she must attend sometimes and others not. But I bet you, each time the connection waned was when she had to leave her control object behind because she couldn't bring it into a holy place."

"Wait, wait, wait, this still makes no sense. She went to the boy's christening. His parents are big-time members of their church. The two boys, their families are practically inseparable."

It only took a little more digging to find out that the only explanation was that the preacher's wife thought the boys were a little too inseparable.

A parishoner reported going into the church office and finding some books on homosexuality. "They must be thinking of starting a ministry," the person said, but the boys knew the woman's motivation must have been quite the opposite.

"So her son was the intended target, and all those other people were collateral damage while she learned how to flex her voodoo on the kid?" Dean asked from where they were staking out the Prewitt's house. Their son was recently home from the hospital and they were receiving a frustrating number of visitors.

"Seems that she wanted to have her son's boyfriend literally beat the gay out of him," Sam observed. "On some level she might have believed homosexuality is a kind of demonic influence. She must have figured nothing would turn Eddie off like nearly getting killed by Soren."

"That's one stone-cold bitch," Dean observed. "Oh look, they're finally leaving."

The couple drove away for the weekly prayer service, leaving their son behind.

"Dammit, we can't go in there with the kid home," Sam complained.

"No, this is perfect. Trust me. You search out the voodoo altar, I want to talk to Eddlie."

For the next twenty minutes, Dean talked to the sixteen-year-old Eddie, who was all taped up and on enough pain medication that he was prepared to let anyone in off the street and accept any explanation for the terrible turn his life had taken. But for once, the hunter chose the truth.

He thought the kid deserved to know who was praying over him, first of all. And he wanted to see how strong he was.

"I knew the whole time he was hitting me that it couldn't be him," Eddie slurred. "I know him better than anyone, and he could never act that way." And something shone past the narcotics and out of his eyes, into some forgotten part of Dean.

Dean recognized it.

He was dazzled to the way you can only be at 16.

It was one of their longer stops. His dad's old friend in rural Connecticut had gotten pretty banged up by some poltergeist, and so Sam and sixteen-year-old Dean were going to look after the sometime-hunter while he mended his broken leg, mostly by making sure that he stayed off it. Their dad took care of the spirit and a few other things in neighboring states for about a month and half, almost two months.

The first night it was just the three of them at the dinner table, Dean was dishing out their simple meal when their host waved his hand in front of his eyes.

"I've been talking to you for five minutes, boy," Bull said. His name was really Will Durham, but everybody called the big grizzled man Bull. "I may not look it, but I was young once, too, you know. Go wherever it is you'd rather be. There's an old bike under the porch, and a pump in the closet in case the tire's flat. We'll do the washing up."

"But I'm supposed to take care of you and Sam."

Sam was just getting to the age where he was resenting being taken care of. He shot Dean a look over his book.

"Sam and I can take care of ourselves. He can fetch me beers from the fridge, and I'll man the shotgun." Bull patted the gun that nestled in his chair.

Dean almost choked on his meal he swallowed it so fast. A few minutes later, he was pedaling to the opposite side of the working class section of town, where he been dying to go for days but didn't dare until his dad was gone.

The little yellow house was easy to find. Dean went around back and found the basement window with a cord hanging out of it. He pulled on it and heard a jingle on the other side of the blinds. A surly face appeared and didn't change expression while gesturing over the music for him to go to the front door.

"Hey," the kid said when he appeared. They stared at each other.

"Black Sabbath, the Paranoid album," Dean said about the music he heard from the basement.

"Yeah." As if Dean had just uttered the open sesame, the guy made way for him to come in. He led the way into a parlor where the noise of a soap opera on full volume easily drowned out the music on downstairs. "This is Dean, Gran," his host shouted.

The smiling old lady in a fuzzy sweater seemed to have nothing to do with the young man in punk-like attire, complete with safety pins in his ears and black painted fingernails, standing in front of her, but she nodded vaguely and patted first the grandson's cheek and then Dean's. "Have you eaten? Davin, don't you let your guest go hungry."

And thus began the routine at the house where Dean spent every second that he could for a month and half. The grandmother hollered for them every once in awhile to get some of her amazing home cooking, but otherwise they were lost in their own private world under the stairs, where the two sixteen-year-olds could continue the mutual observation that they had begun when Dean walked into homeroom his first day.

The teacher had cleared out a chair for Dean, except the person who came next in the alphabet had his feet on it. Resident bad ass, doesn't want his territory challenged, Dean surmised as he and the would-be badass stared each other down with the kid's curtain of long stringy blond hair in between. It struck Dean as vaguely odd that even the teacher was just sitting back and watching the showdown.

"So what, you want me to sit in your lap?" Dean asked with a friendly grin.

The guy moved his feet, but took Dean by surprise by using one foot to snag the chair out from under him as he went to sit down. He fell on his ass. He cared less about looking like an idiot in front of a bunch of teenagers he would never know than he did about not reacting quickly enough. Poor reflexes for a hunter, he thought in his dad's voice.

But he'd been to enough schools to know that this sort of thing couldn't just be left like that.

Dean waited for roll call and once he determined that it was Davin Windham whose ass he was going to have to kick, he turned around and whispered, "Name the time and place."

"Between first and second lunch, on the patio."

Dean showed up and gauged his adversary. He was on the lean side, but wiry; total lack of training, though. A series of automatic calculations were going though his brain composing a punch that would teach the kid a lesson without killing him. The boy in front of him was sneering.

"And what you think you can do to me that hasn't already been done, pretty boy?"

Dean was going to enjoy falling like a grand piano on this kid who thought being tough was the same as dressing tough. The idiot didn't even have enough instincts to know how much danger he could be in. He needed to be brought down a notch.

"Maybe you'll be prettier once I'm done improving your face for you, dumbass."

A small crowd was gathering. "You calling me dumb? I saw the paper you turned in in history class—you didn't even fill in most of the answers."

Dean didn't like knowing that there was going to be somebody sitting behind him in almost every class watching his every move. "We'd only gotten up to the pilgrims at my last school, all right? But you give me an anatomy quiz, and I'll show you 20 places on the human body where I can take you down with maximum pain."

"You're like the perfect meathead—your mother must be proud."

The adrenaline had saturated his body's tissues in a second. "You leave my mother out of this," Dean ground out between his teeth. And he hit the guy before even meaning to. That always scared him, seeing someone laying on the ground stanching a nosebleed and not being able to slow down the events leading up to it and find where he decided to lash out.

Except this time, the kid who had been on the other end of his fist was smiling crookedly at him.

Dean would never figure out if the guy got satisfaction from obviously hitting a sore spot in Dean, or if it was the fact that he'd goaded Dean into punching him, but either way, blood was involved and that obviously meant something to Davin's messed up head.

While still on the ground, Davin pointed towards a worn patch on Dean's leather jacket. "AC/DC."

"Yeah so?" Dean looked at him suspiciously. "I would've thought you listen to Sex Pistols or something like that."

"Led Zeppelin," Davin said.

"Ozzie." Dean countered.

"Motorhead," the kid shot back. Dean offered him his hand to help him up.

"Thanks, pretty boy."

"You're welcome, Buttercup." Davin treated him with that lopsided smile. It was a rare expression, he would come to find out. And Dean observed him closely over the next couple days to try to figure out why.

Finally, Dean sat down near some random people to eat lunch and a cheerleader type said, "He's watching you," and gestured towards Davin sitting alone.

"He doesn't bother me none. I'll teach him another lesson in case the first one didn't sink in." Dean replied.

"Don't be too hard on him," he was surprised to hear the girl say. And the group of students told him Davin Windham's story, beginning with the fact that he wasn't Davin Windham.

Three years ago and two states over, David Montague came home from school and saw his mean old bastard of a dad holding the dying bloody body of his mother, who he just shot because of some jealous paranoid fantasy. Apparently his wife had taken apart half the house looking for a mouse, and when the man came home he misinterpreted the open drawers and disassembled closets as another of her plans to escape from the atmosphere of terror she and her son were used to living in.

Davin's father looked him in the eye and the mouse ran between their feet. His father blew his own brains out right in front of him.

Somehow the story the boy had babbled to the police had followed him when he moved in with his grandmother, despite changing his name and never talking to anyone. It was just too big to stay hidden.

Something clicked in Dean's brain. Davin existed in a bubble of pity that even the teachers were afraid to touch. The person sitting alone across a lunchroom lived in a cottony silence where no one would actually talk to him, no matter what he did to act up. It was a stationary isolation, unlike Dean's mobile one.

Dean walked over to him at the end of lunch. "Where does a loser like you go to get away from it all?"

They skipped class for the rest of the day, hanging out at an old abandoned quarry where Davin liked to smoke cigarettes and throw rocks at some makeshift targets he'd set up. Dean was strangely flattered by the other boy's admiration when he discovered the almost inhuman accuracy with which he could hit a target.

"That's like, statistically impossible, soldier boy," Davin said, setting up one test of skill after another that Dean passed with ease.

"It's nothing," Dean said modestly. "I'm sure you're good at something besides pissing people off."

As soon as he found out that Davin played guitar, Dean wanted to take him up on his invitation to come visit and see him in action. But his dad's iron discipline meant he had to wait a couple days, during which time he tried to figure out this mean kid who mouthed back to teachers as if to fill the silence.

Dean never told him much about himself—he did say that his mother was dead, and that his dad had him and his brother on some sort of mission across the country, but that combined with the fact that both their dads were ex-Marine must have made Davin not want to know any more.

It didn't matter that they didn't talk about anything except music -they did know each other. They kept an eye on each other because it was eerie-here's another boy whose destiny was shaped by the loss of his mother, by the kind of tragedy other people instinctively recoiled from, and they both shared the awareness that everything else was tiny in comparison. They watched each other like feral cats surprised that there was something else just as lean and hungry as they were, and that had been able to survive with almost nothing.

This was all a revelation for Dean. He'd never felt discontent a day in his life. It was his job to keep it together for Sam. But when he started spending time in Davin's basement, they let the harsh sounds of their music express something – sadness, anger, some black emotion – that they were helpless to locate in themselves.

Only now Dean could see what a ridiculous picture they must have made. Weeks of him agog at Davin's real talent for imitating their favorite music on the guitar, while pretending not to watch. And Dean passing the time, throwing pennies into a cup from across the room, or doing chin ups from the exposed pipes in the ceiling, while Davin pretended not to be impressed. Dean took his friend up on his offer to teach him how to play guitar but proved a hopeless student. Surprisingly, Davin refused all his offers to teach him how to fight.

Dean figured it was something having to do with his dad. Their one disagreement had been when Dean brought one of Bull's guns out to the quarry so that he could teach Davin how to shoot. OK, so maybe he wanted to show off his marksmanship, but it was an innocent thing.

And Davin had been impressed. He asked intelligent questions, set up the targets, basically everything he could do to put off actually having to touch the gun. "You sure you don't wanna try—I've only got a few bullets left." Dean asked him, setting down the weapon to reload.

"Nah, man, I don't dig guns."

"Oh, shit, dude, I'm so sorry. I was brought up with guns. I didn't even think-" Dean stammered.

"I know you didn't, asshole," Davin spit, and punched him in the gut.

Dean doubled over, and when he looked up, his friend was wearing that smile that always seemed like it was about to slide off his face.

He should've known. Davin was all knotted up like that—yes, no, pleasure, pain, you never know what you were going to get with him. This tangle of a boy was his first sign that angry, ruined people like his dad weren't born that way. Davin proved that simply seeing too much could ruin a person. Dean had seen plenty at that age but still thought of himself as riding the wave.

"She must be pretty," Bull observed one night when he came back from Davin's.

"Oh yeah, a knockout," Dean replied automatically. He didn't realize then that a pretty girl wasn't just the most likely explanation for a 16-year-old running off after school the way he had been weeks. Now he saw -he'd been acting exactly like he was running off to see some girl.

None of that made any sense until his father came back to announce they were moving on. Dean went to visit Davin one last time.

The other boy surprised him. "I want to learn how to fight."

"All right." Dean took off his jacket and had him in a headlock immediately. "Too slow," he taunted, releasing his friend and then giving him a soft right-left. "You gotta think on your feet."

"Have you taken karate or something?"

"Or something. My dad wanted me to be prepared."

"For what?" Davin struggled out from where he was pinned in a corner.

"For everything."

But it was nothing his father could have taught him to prepare for.

Dean was showing off, getting warmed up, and then had Davin pinned to the ground with ease. The other boy leaned up so that his lips barely touched his as he said softly, "Nice moves, pretty boy." By no measure could it count as a kiss.

Dean froze, and Davin took advantage of the element of surprise. In the second, Davin was on top, and his thigh nudged something solidifying where it shouldn't be in Dean's jeans. Dean's mouth was hanging open in shock and Davin's tongue darted between his teeth, just the tip, quickly, like a lizard.

They looked into each other's eyes, panting, and Dean could tell the other boy hoped he would punch him, that in many ways it would be easier. There would be contact either way.

But Dean chose a third route. He bolted.

He had all their things packed and waiting in the driveway by the time their dad returned from an ammo run. "Hope you aren't leaving any of yourself behind," his dad said, as he had taken to doing once it was understood the Dean was sleeping with girls. Their father had treated both sons to several stern lectures about getting girls pregnant.

"No sir, I was safe," Dean said.

And all the way out of Connecticut, south and then west, towards Ohio, Dean couldn't figure out why playing it safe had him so shaken up. He didn't know what he felt – stupid for not realizing how Davin really was? Mad that he thought that Dean was the same? Sorry that his friend had to hide his real self for so long?

All Dean knew was, something huge had (almost) happen to him, and no one saw a thing. Sam and his dad were both nursing their own grudges. As long as Dean kept things going for their family—making dinner, getting Sam to school-they didn't notice his insides were in knots for days.

At their next stop, Dean found a pretty girl and thought no more about it. Only now he saw Davin as something more than a fucked up kid. That their wrestling match gone wrong wasn't something _he'd done to Dean._ Those almost two months were the closest thing to a relationship he'd had at that age, and for a couple years to come. And at that moment could've gone somewhere longer than a moment. It wouldn't have been the end of the world.

"We're breaking him out," he announced to Sam when his brother returned with the small bundle of hair and worn clothing that had been consecrated into a deadly power over Soren. "Sit tight, dude, and lay off those pills as much as you can. We have a plan, remember."

Sam pushed his brother out the door and into the car. "Dean, I know Soren wasn't responsible for his actions, but we can't run our own witness protection program. And he's 17. We shouldn't be taking him anywhere."

"We're not going to. Eddie will."

"That's crazy," Sam protested. "Even if he didn't have a couple broken ribs, Eddie's parents are already wound up tight. They are not going to let him out of their sight, and the first thing they'll do is connect his disappearance to Soren. Not people I want to tangle with. Plus, unlike us at their age, most kids go to school."

"School will be there, Sam. There's a school in every town America," the older brother observed wearily.

Dean got out his knife and opened the glove compartment. He did a quick tally. "You're three up as it is, so quit complaining." He started adding a notch to the metal that was designated as his side.

This was their private exchange system for the really tough calls. Theoretically, they each had two no-questions-asked judgment calls per year, which were bankable forever. No matter what the other brother thought, if one of them invoked the sacred point system, he had to live with the other's decision.

"Wait," Sam held up his hand. "We'll count this as one if you tell me, why these kids? We always let people pick up the pieces after we've killed the demon or whatever. "

Dean looked up. "Because you ran away. All the time. I didn't. Kids like these don't. And just because it doesn't occur to some of us, everyone deserves a little privacy at that age. How will they even know what they want with these total bastards breathing down their neck?"

"Sixteen and seveenteen are a little young to figure out what you want," Sam pointed out.

"I was never sixteen!" Dean burst out with a ferocity that took them both aback. "Not for very long, anyway," he amended quietly. "Let them have a month to figure out who they are, if they can even stand to look at each other after all this. And if they want to part ways, they'll do it on their own power. At least one parent will be happy to say I told you so. And Soren has no future in this town."

And so that's what happened. Psych wards are pretty easy to break other people out of because nobody expects it. Dean and Sam moved the two teenagers to a nearby town where someone in Eddie's condition could hop a train pretty easily.

With a fistful of money and Dean Winchester's Crash Course in Living on the Run echoing in their ears, the boys were left in the woods near a train spur, waving at the Winchesters with their arms around each other.

All this was Cas's fault, Dean thought bitterly as he felt his brother's eyes scrutinizing him from the passenger seat. It was bad enough that Sam thought it more likely that Dean had his own voodoo control master than that he could be a good human being occasionally. But Sam was probably right.

All this, this trip down a section of memory lane that had never appeared to him that way before-this must be Castiel using his own angelic hoodoo to make Dean be the kind of person he wanted him to be.

Which was apparently a bleeding heart liberal. Who was possibly into dudes.

These fucking angels going around acting like these huge pricks, using people for their own twisted purposes. Where was the informed consent when he'd signed up for his "treatment"?

"Cas, you sick basard," he muttered under his breath.

"What did you say?" Sam asked, half asleep.

"I just said I deserve an explanation. For everything," Dean whispered.


	6. Chapter 6

"Cas, you show your ugly mug right now, or I'll conjure each and every one of your cronies and tell them what you did to me," Dean hollered from the middle of a field in the middle of the night. Sam thought he was out getting drunk, but he had driven out to where no one would hear what he had to say to Cas. He wished he didn't have to hear it himself.

"Don't blame me for your own internal processes," said the angel who was suddenly right in front of him. He looked around. "Why are you calling me from here?"

"So no one except for you can hear why I'm so pissed."

The next thing he knew, he was in that "room" the angel had taken him to before. "See, this is what I mean. I don't wanna be here-this place is like a padded cell. And you don't ask. You just swoop in and there you go – my soul smells bad permanently."

Castiel winced. "Who told you that?"

Cas looked about as freaked out as he was capable of getting, Dean thought, so he pressed ahead. "Someone who also told me I had to ask for it. You broke your own rules, and I know how you people are about rules. Fix it or I'll tell all of your friends you're groping on vessels without even giving up your current one. How was that even possible by the way?"

"I have spent a great deal of time around you, Dean. If we were compatible in that way, I would have noticed. It would have likely started to happen –"

"Started but not finished, because it requires my say so," he lashed back.

Castiel looked blank. "You were – very – emphatic about your consent."

Dean exploded. "Don't ask somebody something that important while they're asleep, first of all. And second, there's no way that happened. Not in my dream, not ever."

Cas' brow cleared. "Of course! I had sped up time in your perception and neglected to slow it down again. What you experienced as happening at a normal speed, when you remembered it in your home dimension it must have been a blur. Try to think about it right now."

Dean just scowled at the suggestion and then he flinched away from the angel's raised fingers reaching for his forehead.

"I'm going to refresh your memory. You have a right to know."

In a few moments Dean gasped and opened his eyes. "The other time I thought of you like one of those Magic Fingers vibrating beds, to be honest, but that," he closed his eyes briefly and shook himself, "Oh my god."

"My intent was merely to be a caring presence while you relived your trauma from hell. But something happened."

"You think?" Dean was reeling. "That's all on you, as the responsible immortal being while I was all screwed up."

The angel made a frustrated gesture. "Dean, I'm sorry. I truly am. If you can forgive me, please believe that if I knew it was a possibility that I would bond with you in that way, I would never have suggested any of this. You were literally a day or two away from being smited by my brothers."

Dean had to admit, as mad as he was, at least he felt like a human being again since Castiel whenever he did. "Okay, if we can't change the past, let's move to the present. You stay the hell away from my head, my feelings, my memories, and, need I add, my body, or I'll –"

The angel protested, "I have not been near any part of you since the – incident." Cas looked blanker than usual.

"Don't play dumb. I got all misty eyed over a couple of gay teenagers today. And I thought about shit I haven't thought about in years, if ever."

Cas' next words knocked him back into that nothing the room was made of. "Davin Windham." He shrugged at Dean shock. "It was one of your roads not taken. Humans have certain junctures where Fate leaves it up to them to decide. You chose something else. We monitor these things for certain people. You're upset," he said to the man seemingly gasping for breath in front of him. "You regret making that choice," Castiel ventured.

"No, I regret looking at the whole thing the way I did today! I regret all this!" Dean paced around restlessly and then wheeled on the angel. "Are you trying to turn me gay, or something? That's all I need- another divine plan nobody asked me about."

Cas made a helpless gesture. "Dean, please, calm down. Everyone is some mixture of –"

"So help me Cas, you're going to find it in you to stop being clinical for one second. This is why the world is so screwed up." Dean threw up his hands. "All you emotionless pricks running the show, deciding stuff for real people with real feelings. Get me out of this place."

"It's one of the most profound things that has ever happened to me," Castiel blurted. "And it is not necessarily condoned."

Dean scoffed. "Balthazar gets plenty."

The angel searched for the words. "He has his liaisons, but this was—I meant it. At least, at the time it made sense," he faltered.

They stared at each other.

"Are you less angry with me. Do you feel at all better?" He was obviously taking a stab in the dark at Dean's emotions.

"I feel worse, thanks, because there's no one to blame." He rubbed his hands over his face. "Fuck, now I've got to live with this."

The arms were inches away when he removed his hands from his eyes.

"I'm asking," Castiel said neutrally. "Would you like whenever it is I give you at this time?"

"When you put it like that –" The sob was out of his throat at roughly the same time as the arms closed around him with a burst of light. He cried for so many things. A kiss that never really had 15 years ago, and everything else he'd missed out on because of the work. Maybe he shed a tear or two over apocalypse, too, who knows? There was no one else Dean could loose his tears on full throttle like that in front of-besides the emotionally-challenged angel who probably didn't realize that dudes don't cry.

It was different than the other times. Gradually, he was warmed by the nuclear reactor surrounding him. It really hit him for the first time how dangerous this was, getting so close to a sun. And he was too much of a sucker for danger not to get excited by that.

With eyes closed, Dean moved his hands over the forbidden male contours with a mix of horror and arousal that was impossible to reign in. Bet he could be with his Aunt Mary if this irresistible energy was radiating out of the middle of her, he was rationalizing to himself. His hand was moving fast on himself, and he tentatively moved to do the same on the other body.

"I'm afraid I got a little excited a little too fast," came the gravelly voice.

Dean compromised by moving the angel's hand to where he wanted to be.

He passed out. While he was unconscious Castiel had to think twice about taking away the memory of this evening. While he was thinking, Dean came to.

"So you –" the man nodded towards the other's groin.

"My experience is a bit different than yours, less localized, but yes. Do you want to go back?"

Dean laughed weakly. "Wait a minute. Damn, Cas, you really don't know how to be with someone." The angel stared and Dean was aware of the irony involved with a serial heartbreaker giving intimacy advice. "You don't boot someone out after doing something like this."

"Oh." Cas was filing the fact away.

There was an awkward silence.

"Okay, fine, have it your way. See you, Thursday."

"What is happening on Thursday?" The angel was confused. "I hate to tell you, Dean, but it's not good to plan too far ahead with the apocalypse coming."

The hunter shook his head fondly. "It's a nickname, dummy. 'Angel of Thursday?' Sound like anyone you know? People who do – things – together usually have nicknames for each other. It makes them feel closer."

Cas nodded seriously. "Like when you call me Rain Man."

"No, not like that."

"Angel names are usually to warn of someone's deadly qualities."

"Just think of the first thing that pops in your head."

"Kitten," Cas blurted out.

Dean was horrified. "That's a girl nickname!"

His companion looked up abashed. "How was I to know that, if cats come in either gender? I started thinking of you that way when I was getting to know you after raising you from the dead. You were this little thing with sharp claws that kept biting the hand that fed him."

Of all the things that Dean heard tonight, this was the most wounding, strangely. "You couldn't see me as a vicious dog or something?"

"I believe that cats are considered more graceful than dogs, although I suppose the latter are the most loyal," he muttered looking away.

Dean preened a little bit. "What if we choose a different type of cat? Like a tiger, that's a respectable nickname for a man."

Cas nodded. He had thought of the human as one of those gray cats striped like a tiger.

"All right, Tiger," that raspy voice said.

It'd never sounded like a purr before.

"Be seeing you, Thursday."

The angel sent to the man back to his home dimension. Then he returned to his room, where he thought for a long time. Castiel couldn't remember the last time when he felt so terrible.

Both times, he'd lost control of himself when the man was suffering. That must be what he liked about Dean. The human's obvious ecstasy left him cold.

But when the man was good and miserable he couldn't contain himself.


	7. Chapter 7

_'There is something you do not know,' the Khan adds. 'The grateful moon has granted the city of Lalage a rarer privilege: to grow in lightness.'_

_-Italo Calvino_

"You boys need to get here right now," a shaken Bobby said to Sam over the phone. "I wouldn't believe it if I wasn't looking at it. It's all of them-"

"Hold tight, Bobby-just tell us where you are and we're coming to you," Sam flipped open his laptop. "Dean, we've got to make a stop. Go ahead, Bobby."

"Eastern tip of Idaho, a little town you never heard of called Island Park, north of Rexburg, which you probably also never heard of." There was a pause. "Hello, Sam?"

"We've heard of it, Bobby. Give me the address and we'll be there inside an hour."

Sam hung up the phone and turned on his brother. "When I got my funky ESP stuff you were all over me about it. And you expect me to sit here next to you while you happen to steer us to the right place at the right time? This is, I don't know, the seventh or eighth coincidental case, by my count." His brother shrugged. "What made you take this route out of Seattle?"

Dean let out a long breath. "I don't know how you deal with the pressure in our lives, Sam, I've never understood it. You're cooler with it than me, most of the time. But I'm asking, if I found a little corner of que será, que será after my most recent of many brushes with death, would you have me reject it on principle, just because it made you feel funny?"

His brother hunched down in the seat. "No, of course not. And Bobby sounded like he needed help sooner rather than later."

When they pulled up to the old farmhouse both Winchesters had scoped it as a hunter residence. Careless exterior with barely visible state of the art cameras in strategic spots. A couple of old-fashioned booby traps just visible in the woods. "Old school and new school," Dean said, pointing.

"Boys, you'll have done me a solid if you confirm what I think I'm seeing," said the older man. He hung back so he could have a word with the younger Winchester. "Where were you guys headed that you got here so fast?"

"I don't know, ask Mr. 'Khan is my copilot,'" Sam said bitterly.

"No offense, kid, but you're in no position to criticize about leaving the psychic valves open."

"I guess."

Bobby punched him in the shoulder. "I swear, you two are like a couple of old maids when it comes to the other having a bit of good luck. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were jealous. Now come and see this."

Dean was already climbing down the ladder. "What kind of a sorry ass panic room is this if it didn't protect them?" he called up. "Holy crap."

The two other men followed him down.

It was the best panic room Bobby Singer had ever been inside of. Hunters with stationary residences had some kind of hidey-hole—they always had, back in the days of dunking chairs and burning pitch and the like. Bobby didn't consider himself an expert on much, but he believed himself to be a world-class paranoiac at times.

His friends Jeb, Sallie, Boris and Piotr outclassed him hands down.

They'd crossed paths a few times, more than a few, but their reticent natures kept anyone from getting too friendly until Boris crawled up to his house one night, half-dead and begging him to go back for Piotr.

Some demon had loused them up pretty good, and Bobby patching them up was finally the icebreaker that helped him get to know these four brilliant hunters who were now dead in their own safe house.

The two teams—Sallie and Jeb, Boris and Piotr, was how they usually divided up—took turns manning the phones and bringing in a little money while the other team was on the road. The two Russians were translators and the two Americans were consultants for the forest service, most of the time. It was like a great big barracks full of gallows humor, Bobby remembered from his occasional visits when the four were in house. Their archives and methods were as systematic as a beehive, and they marveled that Bobby's no-system system allowed him to find anything at all.

The three men surveyed the gleaming iron walls of the panic room, riveted and overlapped and re-riveted until there was nothing that could get through. Precise sigils had been traced in blood all over the walls, floor and ceiling and then sealed with some kind of resin so the blood looked fresh. "It's a work of art," Sam said, tracing a shape. "Look, the blood seems almost—alive—under this."

"It's salt-based sealant. They thought of everything." Bobby led them on a macabre tour. "Silver, everywhere you'd expect and places you wouldn't. Enough food for months. They had several redundant water systems in this place, with none of them allowing unfiltered access in or out to the municipal water system." He rapped on a computer. "Entire library has been digitized in case they have no internet. And their intel security is state of the art."

Sam was oddly excited. "So what you're saying is, not only are we facing the classic problem of a murder in a locked room, but it's like, murder in a locked fortress with the best weapons hunters could have."

"That's about the size of it," Bobby said. "I say we look 'em over good, give 'em a hunter's funeral and then I drink this thing into more sense than it's making for me right now."

When their uncle went to go prepare the pyres, the Winchesters exchanged a dark look. "At least some of these wounds they must have inflicted on each other," Sam said, indicating the scratches they each bore and the remnants of flesh under the fingernails." The knife wounds could have come from somewhere else, or from the knives still in their hands. "Maybe we can avoid telling Bobby."

"He's no fool. He knows something is way off about this. There's no obvious cause of death in all but one case. One of the Russian guys got stabbed pretty good, but the rest, I don't see it." Dean was checking over the locks as the first line of entry for potential assailants. Their uncle had said the only way he was able to get in to the sealed room was that the hunters had told him their secret outside flip switch once.

"If one of them knew enough to radio for help, it couldn't have been all that fast," Sam observed as he examined the radio set. "Morse code SOS, their coordinates and initials. Bobby was actually listening, but he was too late, poor guy."

"These are the poor guys. And gal. What do you think these fine gouge marks are? Fingernails?" Dean straightened up. "Damn, what I wouldn't give for my own personal crime lab sometimes."

"We need to eliminate one of two scenarios. Either something supernatural got in, in which case we have figure out what could possibly get into Fort Knox. Or, four friends turned on each other. Something made them crazy."

"You're having a little too much fun with this, Sherlock. See if you can hold back your enthusiasm when the old man is around," Dean said.

They took a few photographs of the marks on the bodies and scoured every surface for signs of an opening, but the place was like a layer cake of anti-supernatural materials.

Not long afterwards they were preparing a pyre for four, and then drinks for three out of the startlingly strong vodka courtesy of the late Piotr and Boris.

"I'll be designated hunter," Sam said, as he watched the other two men raid the alcohol stash. "We have no idea if whatever this thing is is still here, or is going to come back."

"Don't worry, I have no intention of trying to keep pace with Bobby," Dean whispered. "I want him good and unconscious so he doesn't try to fight the thing like a damn fool."

Dean had been drinking less since he brought his number of sins back to the pedestrian seven, Sam had noticed. Dean would say he was going out to a bar when they stopped for the night, but Sam was an expert at judging his brother's level of inebriation, and he was nowhere near intoxicated when he came back to the room.

Sam had shadowed his older brother and found he'd developed a strange new affinity for being alone. The only thing Sam could fault his brother for was that his solitary walks tended to take him into dark, uninhabited parts of town, but that only meant that the odd mugger would have a very unpleasant surprise should he tangle with the sober veteran hunter.

"Hey, Sam, you can't make me do this on my own." Dean was struggling to hold up their drunk uncle. "This stuff could take paint off the walls. Those Russian dudes must have known how to party."

Together, they put their uncle in a bedroom and added a few of their homemade wards against general evil. "Sleep well, Bobby," Dean said. "We'll wake you up if we're under siege."

None of the household's music was any good so Dean wandered down to the panic room, where Sam had unearthed a pack of cards and they played for matchsticks.

"There's nothing that says the thing will come back at exactly the same time," Sam said. "It may never come back."

Dean was taking a nap on the cot while Sam held watch, when the younger Winchester decided to check on his uncle. Bobby was snoring away contentedly inside his ring of salt, and so Sam went looking for something to read.

He gave a long, slow whistle. Bobby wasn't kidding about his friends' book collection. Some of these books he'd never heard of. All of them had neat dust jackets and were organized by era and then alphabetically.

Sam's fingers began feeling around on the shelves. Nobody in their right mind keeps the best books, the really old dangerous books, on display. Bobby kept his in a fireproof box that could only be accessed through his underwear drawer. These people were too smart not to have done the same.

There it was, a click. Sam stepped through the opening as the shelf swung open. This closet was not as orderly as the rest of the house. Sam ran and woke his brother. "I think I know where it must have started."

The two stood in the doorway and surveyed the hidden room. "I don't think we should just randomly read out the invocations and see what happens," Dean objected. "Unless you're thinking cursed object?"

They performed their usual diagnostics, careful not to touch anything, but nothing on the secret shelves popped. Sam closed up the room regretfully. "I thought for sure it happened in there."

Dean was moving around the house as if honing in on something. "No brother, I think you were right about it being a book, it's just not in their secret stash." The coffee table had the coffee table-book version of hunters' lore—glossy tomes with myths and artifacts from around the world, things like that. "This doesn't belong here."

Always skeptical of his brother's hunches, Sam looked over Dean's shoulder as he opened the small, worn leather volume.

"One book with some blank pages, and the rest in some language I've never seen before," Dean said, closing the book and setting it back on the table. "Listen, man, we can keep beating our heads against the wall or call it a night. It looks like it'll keep."

They made their way downstairs to resume the poker game. "Did you hear that?" Dean asked.

"Yeah," Sam put down his cards. "We should go check on Bobby." The lights flickered. "Oh no, we should have made him sleep down here."

"Sam?" Dean called in the sudden darkness. "Wouldn't these hunter master-minds have thought ahead about a possible power outage?"

"They did; I saw lanterns and flashlights on a shelf above the door." Sam felt around. "This flashlight is no good. None of them are. Get the box of matches we've been playing with. I've got a lantern here."

"Uh, yeah, let me see. Yes. Got it." Dean waited for his brother to feel his way to the table. "Set it right there and let me—"

Scrrratch. Whoosh. "Ow." Something clinked into the ashtray. "That match definitely lit up. It burned my finger."

"You mean?"

"We're blind, Sam."

Probably one of the worst arguments the Winchester brothers ever had was the one about whether the panic room door should be open or shut.

"It's in here. I don't want to be locked in a room with a monster," Dean hissed.

"It was the book, dude, I'm sure of it. It took a few minutes to affect us, but it must have been that last book. And we can put a hunk of iron between it and us." He tried to appease his brother. "Your spidey-sense led us to it."

"Be that as it may, something followed us in here, and I'd rather die blind but not claustrophobic."

"Did you hear that?" The high-pitched sound came again.

Dean's hand felt for his brother's arm. "I don't want to go down like those people, with half the wounds inflicted by friendly fire. We go down together." He had his belt off. "I'm going to hook us together so we don't get lost."

The sound swirled in the air around us and they shivered together. "Okay. Weapons ready." It was a roar as of many voices. Dean felt his brother's back tense against his and shouted, "Whatever you do, don't cut me, Sam."

When they discussed it later, they agreed that those five minutes were some of their most terrifying to date. And the Winchesters had multiple classification systems for fucked up shit.

Back to back, they slashed in the darkness. Occasionally they felt some kind of contact, a thing brush against their face or press against their blade. But because they couldn't see, it might have been a giant or an ant. The lack of specificity meant they were fearing hundreds of things at once.

And having another person's physiology to mirror the terror in his own—Dean felt every ounce of his brother's fear resonate into his back.

"Are you getting hurt?" Sam shouted. "I feel cuts, but they're not deep."

"Yeah, but have you ever heard of Death by a Thousand Cuts? They keep this up long enough—"

And then Dean saw it.

The very fact of seeing anything after some time in complete blindness was jarring. The shape was nothing he had ever seen before, but it didn't matter. "Thank the Lord."

"Dean? What's the matter?" Sam asked in a panicked voice through the din.

"Cas is here." Dean was racking his brains, trying to translate what his eyes had seen about the topography of the room into what he might run into in the blackness.

"How do you know? Ow!" The bites or whatever they were beginning to sting.

"Put your blade away. Dammit, listen to me Sam, put your blade away." Dean hooked his arm through his brother's. "On my count, one, two three."

He pulled his brother onto the floor and rolled them to where the beacon of light was.

The brothers felt fingers on their foreheads and then they could see, and the noise died away.

"That should hold them for a moment," the angel was saying. "They're a bit like bats—they orient themselves by sonar and can be confused by the right sounds."

The boys surveyed their attackers dumbly. "You're not making any noise," Sam said.

"It's beyond your hearing, but they are very disoriented right now."

The small creatures, which looked like black, ugly hags smaller than a penny, were milling about aimlessly where the brothers had been fighting them. "Are those teeth?" Sam asked, looking closer. "Ugly little things."

"Yes, this is a very old kind protection technology. Old as in, the beginning of human writing. It used to be that people had a great respect, bordering on fear, for the written word, which was reserved for things like religious doctrine and other spiritual purposes. The words were thought to have life, and in some cases they did." The angel made a motion and gathered the black motes into his hand. "Could you show me what book you were reading before this happened?"

"We'd rather not, if that's okay. One bout of blindness was enough."

"It's sunrise. They only come out at night." Cas seemed strangely excited.

"What do, Cas?" Sam's nerves were frayed.

They climbed out of the panic room and the brothers gestured to the coffee table with the book. "Please, just take it away," Sam said. "Don't open it!"

Cas laid his closed hand on the book and slowly opened the palm. "It won't be necessary. I haven't come across one of these in a long time. In ancient Hebrew, each of the marks on a page was known as a tris, or doorway. Some people took it metaphorically, but in some cases each black mark was actually a living thing that could open a door to wisdom. If you approached it with the right attitude, often meaning a certain prayer, they would form into the right shape—into words that would lead to knowledge."

"And if you didn't approach them in the right way, they'd attack you through your eyes?" Dean rubbed his eyes reflexively.

Cas nodded. "Yes! That's exactly it. They get in the human system when the uninitiated look at them on the page. Their sisters, the rest of the words In the book, try to retrieve them by wounding your skin. Or more likely, vibrating the foreign objects—their word-sisters-in your system until your brain explodes and they come out whatever orifice is handy."

"Dare you to put that on a death certificate," Dean said to his brother wryly. "Hell of a way for them to go."

Sam sat down in the weak light and gestured to his brother, then poured each of them a stiff one of that Russian Everclear. "That's what we heard—the things inside us were calling to their sisters and vice versa." He froze. "They're not still in my head, are they?"

"Not to worry. Your blindness disappeared when I removed them. They're back in the book now." The angel gestured to the volume. "You don't mind if I take this? Some of my brothers will be most interested in such a find."

"We owe you more than that after keeping our brain from exploding." The brothers raised their glasses to toast the angel.

"Here's mud in your eye," Dean said, but the angel was gone.

"That sucked," the said at the same moment.

Sam poured them another shot. "What I don't understand is how Cas knew we were in trouble. Did you call him?"

"Uh, yeah." The vodka made a long silky trail down Dean's throat. "Didn't you hear me? I was praying my head off. It was the only thing left to do."

"No, those things must have been vibrating in my ears. I didn't hear you call for him, or hear him say anything when he showed up." Sam leaned back heavily on the couch. "I wonder what the book was, after all this."

"Big trouble, jokes that only angels can understand, who knows?"

Bobby woke up with an amber-alert level hangover and two sleeping Winchesters passed out on the couch. When the brothers woke up around midday they found their uncle in the secret book closet with a big smile on his face. "Can you believe this library? You boys should stock up while you're here. It's what they would have wanted. Boys?"

"We've developed a healthy respect for the written word," Dean advised their uncle from where they had fled to the far reaches of the yard.

Eventually he coaxed them inside and they raided the dead hunters' fridge and got Bobby up to speed. "Where you off to?" he asked later that afternoon.

Sam shrugged and nodded towards his older brother.

"Well, wherever it is, be safe. And thank you."

Despite what his brother might think, Dean actually had no idea where they were going.

At this point, orientation was not his strong suit, let's say. He simply drove until they came upon a town where the shadows looked nice and thick. "Let's stop here."

At dinner, Sam looked at the book his brother was reading: _Invisible Cities _by Italo Calvino. Some bookstore owner in Detroit had turned Dean onto it because it was about _a_ Khan, just not _the_ Khan. Kublai Khan was Genghis Khan's grandson, and his philosophical musings were enough to transport Dean far from the truck stop where Sam was struggling with something, he didn't know what.

It was as small as those little creatures that nearly killed them the night before. But small could be powerful.

Dean threw down his napkin and closed his book. "I'm going to go tie one on, brother. You coming?"

"Nah, my head's still not on straight after last night. I'll catch you later."

Dean walked around for a while. Evaluating the shadows and revving up this silent telegraph system inside himself he was just learning to use. He didn't have to turn around to know that Sam was following. Of course he was. He appreciated it.

When he got to a nice, deep shadow Dean walked slowly through it. To his brother's eyes, he knew nothing would seem amiss.

"You redecorated." Dean flopped on a comfortable couch in Cas' room. "This is a lot less creepy for me, thanks."

The angel nodded.

"Why did you never tell me what you looked like?" Dean said excitedly. "You have eight wings. And you are pretty huge."

The angel grimaced. "I made myself smaller to fit in the room, but yes, well, most angels have six. It's a source of embarrassment for me."

"Why? Would that be like having an extra set of legs would make me seem like a freak?"

"In heaven, there is no 'seems.' There is only 'is.' That's why matter is peculiar for us—a material thing can seem good, when it is actually bad." The angel watched the human take a swig from his flask with a raised eyebrow. "With your world, form does not equal content. What you say to me very often means something completely different than its literal sense. But the fact that I look different in some way has always set me apart as being really different."

"Sit here and let me try to wrap my head around what I saw when I was blind and could see your normal form," Dean patted the couch. "I mean, where is it all? Where are your wings?"

Castiel took the man's hand and held it several feet away from his vessel-body. "Assuming I had shrunk to scale, here would be one wing," he moved the hand, "here would be another." He pointed them all out and waited for the inevitable question.

"I didn't call you, Cas. I was too freaked to even think about it," Dean said quietly. "Don't get me wrong, I appreciate it, I'm thankful that we can connect easily and have these times-away-from-time without my having to talk about it with anyone. But—how far does this connection go? Did you hear me thinking I was going to die? Or sense my fear? Or did I call you without realizing it?"

Castiel silenced the man with enough ecstasy that he would forget the question. It was odd how important it was to humans that every experience be shared. Heaven was a busy place. He'd not had loneliness or intimacy, per se. Warriors aren't made that way, usually.

Anger was the main vice in heaven. Perhaps if they had more emotions to choose from there wouldn't be so many intrigues and vendettas wouldn't last forever. A holy wrath. That's what came down upon the wicked. And grace was something so pure that only the higher-echelon angels like himself could see it as anything other than the fabled bright white light.

Castiel was capable of seeing grace—it had weight, texture, shape. The investigation of grace was what kept him and his brothers occupied during non-fighting hours. It was like an infinite puzzle, an eternal discovery fit to entertain any angel, no matter what his temperament, forever. Through a scientific eye, grace would look like an intricate molecule, but it was also an exquisite psalm, and anything else good and pure you could think of.

It's not that there were blobs of the stuff hanging around heaven. As far as anyone had been able to determine, and the angels had millennia to consider it, grace was like an angel's angel. The things humans complained about angels—that they didn't come when you called, that they had this big picture but refused to clue anyone else into it—were exactly what the angels reproached grace for.

It would just pop up at times, offering a sign or a bit of encouragement or a warning. Or nothing at all but the fact of its presence. But just because grace was beautiful and comforting didn't mean that it wasn't formidable in its own way. Everything in heaven was, Cas thought ruefully.

"What are you thinking about?" the man startled him from the couch.

"Grace. It's like the angel's angel." And on a whim, Castiel explained the best angel intelligence on the subject.

"You mean, you understand what it's like to be routinely kept in the dark and you do it to me anyway?" The man laughed. "This actually makes me feel a lot better about you. We're in the same boat."

"How do you mean?" The man's attempts to draw parallels between their disparate existences made him uncomfortable.

Dean's brow was furrowed in thought. "Except you guys don't just morph into anything. Describe to me what it would look like again."

Castiel made a helpless gesture. "There are heavenly departments dedicated to putting it into words. I'm a soldier." He paused. "To me, it seems like a flower or some other beautiful thing, but I know that grace is very stubborn and must not be opposed. Only the highest level angels have so much as nudged it. I saw someone try to defy it and—imagine something the size of a button throwing aside a being the size of your car. Kindly. It's not unkind."

Dean nodded. "It's like Tinkerbell with a black belt."

"I have no idea what that is."

"Go to Disneyland and find out. I'll wait." Dean took another swig and before he swallowed it the angel was back.

"Cas? Cas? Are you hurt?" Dean jumped up and touched the angel's shoulder, which was shaking, and odd sounds were coming from his throat.

"No, no, I—" The angel straightened up. "That was very apropos, Dean. The defiant posture, the—everything. You have the most amusing way of putting things."

"I've never seen you laugh before," Dean said. "This is laughing, right?"

"You make me laugh very frequently," the angel said with his usual lack of inflection. "Only a small part of who I am is manifest on this plane at any time."

The man nodded thoughtfully and sat drinking silently for some moments.

"Are you unhappy?" Castiel rushed to ask. Humans were so changeable—he was beginning to understand the world a little better. How could anyone have time to listen to the clues angels left for them if they were feeling things all the time?

"No, Cas. Trying to fit things together, that's all. My entire self-concept has fallen apart several times recently, and you're the only one I can talk to about it. Human angst is boring, I know, but my learning curve for right living is pretty steep." He saw a pained expression flit over the angel's face. "Don't worry, man, I've been an emotional wreck my whole life and it's never hurt me none. But I should be getting back."

The angel had just enough time to transport the man back to his point of origin before the unwanted blast exploded from him, instigated by the man's attack of melancholy before he left.

"This is a grave evil," Castiel told himself and pulled the book from his pocket. It was a sign—finding this book of all things when he went to go rescue Dean.

Cas must have been drawn by the man's irresistible suffering while he faced a sure death in darkness. No one should like anything as well as he liked partaking of this human's unhappiness. It was all he could do to keep himself from reaching for the man in front of his brother. This was a perversion that placed him on the level of a demon.

The angel drew himself up to his full height and flitted around the globe several times until he found the correct incantation to use the book properly without harming his vessel.

Castiel uttered the hosanna customarily used before a battle. He would receive the healing hand of grace, or be torn apart by its fierce gentleness in the process.

Dean finished walking through the pool of darkness and stopped to check his phone in order to give himself a moment to rehearse his entire evening with Cas before he forgot it. This time-bending stuff was amazing. He never had to admit to anyone what he was doing or who he was doing it with.

Or sort of with. Dean wasn't an idiot. Poor Cas had no idea to what extent he wore his heart on his sleeve.

He knew he was being tolerated some of the time.

Heading back to the motel, Dean considered calling up Balthazar but decided against it. Sam would wonder why, Balthazar would say something suggestive—a mess. Besides, he go the angel anatomy lesson the first time through.

Angels have these different regions or organs, that corresponded to virtues. Truth, justice, valor, beauty, etc. Because there was so much to them and so little to humans, they had to choose which "fingers" to use Balthazar's analogy, to put in the few available spaces in a human-shaped glove.

Hence the one-note performance you got out of most of these guys. And if they were manifesting with their truth-self and you told a big whopper, it didn't go over well.

Dean couldn't figure out how Cas got tab A into slot Z, but he knew something was wrong.

Because sometimes, it killed him to think it, sometimes things were right.

Dean circled around so that Sam could return to the motel and pretend to have been there all night. All things considering, it had been a good day. Seeing Cas' true shape like he did today was a huge relief.

He looked more like a bird with too many wings or one of those fish with the long trailing fins.

He was not a dude.

Dean went to sleep and had luminous dreams.


	8. Chapter 8

_Marco enters a city; he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man's place, if he had stopped in time, long ago…. By now, from that real or hypothetical past of his, he is excluded; he cannot stop…_

_Journeys to relive your past?" was the Khan's question at this point, a question which could also have been formulated: "Journeys to recover your future?"_

_Invisible Cities _by Italo Calvino

Castiel sensed the presence hovering politely outside the door. Only trusted angels knew where his room was, but he didn't want to see any of them either. He whispered a binding spell while he tucked the book away. "What brings you here, brother?"

On another plane Balthazar's full form bowed to his, and Castiel returned to the ritual greeting while their human vessels gazed at each other.

"There's been talk, Castiel." Balthazar stepped inside. "You redecorated." He sat down and put his feet, coffee table. "Do you keep drinks?"

"No, I am sorry."

His visitor was suddenly serious. "So about what I've been hearing—"

"There has always been talk, Balthazar," Cas said crossly. "There always will be. We both decided to ignore it as much as possible long ago."

"Alll I'm saying is that you could be more discreet." Balthazar dismissed his brother's raised eyebrow as commentary on his own habits. "Believe it or not, I've had some humans I was very fond of. Yes, you wouldn't know it because I shuffled them around so no one knew which I favored at the time. It's for their safety as much as mine."

"That measure would be unacceptable for me."

Balthazar got up to pace. "You and I always shared a certain view of the ultraorthodox from back home. But to those folks, what is new is never as convincing as what is known. Rafael and the other traditionalists couldn't fail to notice Dean's stunning recovery from the worst case of Acedia in ages. And then your surprised bonding right under Michael's nose, leaving a Dean who is better adjusted than he's been in years. You're thumbing your nose at them, at this point."

"He seems quite moody to me," Cas complained.

"You know what I mean: he's trying. All that stopped for him some time back. And we both know the Michael plan didn't require optimal mental health for him to say the magic word yes."

"That is why this is a good time to end it."

Balthazar stared. "You're going to end it? Just like that? Hack off the bonds? One or both of you could be greatly harmed. And the man seems to be taking to it so well. Positively gleams from a mile away."

Castiel gave him a withering glare and then his face went carefully blank.

The other ancient one touched his hand. "You're not well, Castiel. I could always read you, on that plane and this one."

"I'm fine," Cas said stiffly.

"You two are so much alike!" Balthazar burst out.

"That's absurd."

"Too proud to ask for help? Stoic on the outside, bleeding heart on the inside? Good at smiting, but so much more if he could just figure out what that was—"

Cas caught himself just in time. "He is a small mammal," is what came out. He was about to say kitten.

"Be that as it may, we know that guardian angels, personal relationships, are frowned upon. It's what everyone wants, but even if you don't subscribe to the strict hierarchy between them and us as does Rafael, you must admit that if we take a personal interest in everyone it's a logical impossibility where we're constantly tripping over ourselves, and if we don't it's not fair."

"I'm going to fix it," Castiel said. "Encourage him to pay attention to other things. From what I've learned his attention span is similar to a fruit fly's."

"Perhaps it's best, brother," Balthazar said. "I'll let you know if the gossip doesn't relent."

Sam pulled into the motel parking lot after some intel gathering on their latest case. "Hey, Sam, it isn't a banshee, I don't think—"

Sam blinked at where his brother had been a moment ago. These angels. No more hello, goodbye, by your leave, I'm taking your brother to 1979; they were just snatching him up these days. "Humph," Sam said and went back to his research.

Dean found himself in a nicer apartment than he usually frequented, and was just deciding that he'd never been that far up in a high rise in New York City before when he saw the two heads peeping over the couch. "Hi, do I know you?" he asked while approaching.

"I hope so," the other Dean Winchester said with his arm around easily one of the the most good-looking men Dean had ever seen.

"What? Are you? Is he?" Dean's mouth was hanging open with the effort of trying to put himself, himself, and some male model type together with a nicely-furnished apartment with a view of the East River.

"Ugh! This again!" The man got up and slammed himself into the bedroom.

"What's with Adonis over there?" Dean asked himself.

"You remember his name! That's progress. The others haven't retained anything of our conversations. He hates it when I bring work home."

"Others, you mean there's more of us in this timeline?"

"Not at once, thankfully, but my boyfriend and I have been entertaining other Dean Winchesters in quick succession for the last eleven or twelve hours."

"Boyfriend?"

Adonis flung open the door. "We've done it your way, Dean. We're going to try it my way," he said in an accent Dean couldn't place. He turned to the intruder. "Yes, boyfriend. Let's see if we can move this along, shall we? You-that you, and for all i know, this you-he likes cock. That's right. He's gay. And he's still as big of a badass as you are; he kills demons and assorted nastiness on a daily basis; his musical tastes got stuck three decades back. Your car is in the garage. In short, he didn't spontaneously deconstruct when he started dating guys. Are you still with me, sport?"

"I scored-–that—him—and he lets you play house with him?" he asked his mirror image as he processed the single bedroom. They nodded slowly and encouragingly. "A ten is a ten, is all i'm saying. You've held on to him for awhile—and you're still a hunter—it must be love. Who else would put up with your sorry ass for any length of itme?"

The Other Dean scowled.

"I like this one," Adonis said. "Hopefully he won't stay long. Do you want a beer? Of course you do. As cheap as possible? You bet. Coming right up."

"Yes, we spend two weekends a month minimum. I stop whatever I'm doing and pop some tranquilizers before hopping hte first plane wherever I am. We make the time." He chuckled" I know. Flying." He nodded at the question in his other self's eyes. "Yes, it's that good," he whispered.

Adonis came back and set the beer in front of him and made a "moving along" gesture to his mate. The Other nodded. "As far as we've been able to determine, this isn't about who you sleep with. It's about Dad."

Dean started. "Is he still alive? Is he hurt in your timeline?"

"No, he's been gone awhile," Dean said sadly. "But from what I've been able to piece together from your predecessors, I kissed Davin Windham back, and I liked it. But what really made the difference was me ending up on my own for most of my sixteenth year."

Dean let out a long, slow whistle. "Dad must have freaked at you abandoning the family like that. Did he know that was why?"

"Of course. He kicked me out in Indiana when I said I was going to go back and visit Davin over the summer." He staved off Dean's question. "It was the best thing that ever happened to both of us. Dad had some time to think about what he wanted more-having the son he imagined in his head, or having his son in his life. And I had some of the best months of my life doing my own thing. When we met up again, it was like Dad really saw me for the first time. I was no longer an extension of him. Maybe not quite as close, but there was more respect, in a way."

The visiting Dean was scrutinizing him. "Is any of this hitting home? No offense, I always want to help a brother out, but I'm sure you're as anxious to get back to whatever you're doing as we are to get back to our weekend. Oh, there you go. He's going!"

The visiting Dean heard an answering shout from the bedroom, the Other Dean shouted back in some odd language and then knocked him flat with a punch.

"I know, bad touch, I didn't like it any more than you did."

"What did you do that for?" the visiting Dean asked, rubbing his torso. "That has to be some mega-bad karma for you on some level. Though it's good to know you've still got it."

"I guess it means that some—strong-physical reminder that this is actually reality must keep you from going back so fast. I've tried tying you down and various binding spells and you keep slipping away after you get this tortured look on your face. What is making you that unhappy?"

"This dude I've been kind of seeing-he and I have had some problems."

Adonis appeared at the bedroom door. "He? You've been tormenting us for 12 hours and it's not because you're miserable and alone? Go back and get in couples therapy."

"Well, gee, I'm not sure whether they have that for humans who are messing around with angels."

"Angels," the couple said as one.

"Well, it's just the one," Dean protested.

"Angels, like the scary guys with the eyes that look right through you that I won't let Dean get anywhere near?" Adonis asked.

That little piece hurt as it fell into place for the visiting Dean. It looked as though love and maybe a little more backbone could have kept the archangel off his tail from the get-go. Michael must like fixer-uppers. "Listen, I don't have time for you to figure out how that fits into your rainbow flag. All I know is, something went wrong—"

"Ya think?" The Other Dean scowled at him.

He scowled back. "—And fuck if I know. It's all a little confused in my mind. If I've been time traveling for hours and can't make sense of it, my brain must be getting more scrambled by the minute."

"I'll set him a place for dinner," Adonis said.

The Other Dean shouted at him in that odd language again and Adonis slammed himself back into the bedroom.

"What languge is that?"

"Greek." His other self shook his head sadly. "The thing that bothers me most about all of you is that you have no problem accepting anything, even talking to another version of yourself, but you can't believe that you're actually smart." He leaned forward. "Plus I had an incentive. You can only listen to so much gobbledygook in bed before you get real curious about what someone is saying."

A more seductive shout came from the bedroom and Dean watched the two have an incomprehensible conversation whose meaning was plain as day. "That's just messed up," the visiting Dean shook his head.

"You're going to get an attack of the vapors now? How can I be such a wuss in this other reality?"

"No, can I have a few moments alone with your fella? I promise to keep my hands to myself."

The Other Dean shrugged and whispered something to his partner at the bedroom door, and then shut himself inside and turned up some Led Zeppelin.

"Look, I've not seen it too many times in my life, but even the Moral Majority would agree that you guys are the real deal. It would take true love to make an island of happiness in the middle of the apocalypse. I'm assuming there is one in this timeline?"

Adonis sighed. "Yes. I am a scholar of antiquities, Biblical studies and the like. We met 10 years ago when the first tremors, as it were, were beginning and a few of us in academia noticed the parallels between certain old texts and current events. Dean and I work together, us and a trusted group of people-some I know in Europe, some in America."

Dean was nodding impatiently. "And Sam?"

The man shook his head sadly. "How many more times are you going to make me break this to you? I'm sorry. He's slated to enter the inferno on the arm of Lucifer at some point in the future. I've got some of the best minds in the world on that, but so far, nothing."

Dean leaned back. "I'm happy for you guys, but I'm sorry. This isn't possible." He felt the pain well up inside him, and then he felt the pain times ten when the Greek's fist knocked him back a foot.

"You were about to leave. I don't want to have to go through this again. It's not safe for Dean to be interacting with another version of himself," Adonis said apologetically.

The visiting Dean rubbed his jaw. "You are an ox, man, and I don't want to know what that means for my other self in there." Dean nodded towards the bedroom. "Thanks for not dislocating my jaw, I guess."

"Don't mention it," Adonis replied with a smirk. "What were you thinking, before you almost left?"

Dean tried to express the idea. "So the other me, he doesn't strike you as frequently miserable, shall we say? No brooding, no stewing?" Adonis shook his head. "Then it's not me."

"The resemblance isn't enough for you?" The Greek groaned. "Please tell me you're not going to compare scars again. We've already been through that once and it was very awkward." The Other Dean emerged from the bedroom. "Keep your pants on. No one is stripping this time."

"No, it's not necessary," Dean's thoughts were rushing very fast. "I'm not here to learn something. I'm being thrown here as many times as it takes until I stick."

"Two of us in this timeline? Impossible."

"No, one. I become you."

"No offense, but we're really not into that," Adonis said protectively.

"I'm sure this is about you figuring out something in your own reality, rather than busting into mine," the Other Dean protested with his hand on his partner's arm.

Dean jumped up. "No, you see, that's the way a human would think. Sit on the couch with Dr. Phil, gain some insight, you come away a better man. This is an angel we're talking about. About as subtle as an avalanche." He tried to put himself in their shoes. "You may not know angels personally, but they aren't invincible. Cas, he doesn't have enough mojo to actually rewrite fate. He can keep flinging me against this plane like a lightning bug against a screen door, but I'm never going to make it through and merge into you. The question is, why did he push the eject button on my other life? Why would he think he could?"

"Maybe you shouldn't be spending time around someone who puts you on the spin cycle without asking," the Other Dean said. "I'm not you, man, not exactly, but this doesn't seem very healthy. No one can be that good in bed."

"We're not exactly suffering in that regard, some of the time," Dean shot back. "I've got it," he moaned.

"What is it?" The two men leaned forward eagerly.

"This isn't about Dad, though you gave me some things to think about. This is about pain." The visiting Dean grimaced. "You have no idea what it's like to be me, honestly. It's a neverending river of suffering, always has been. You did something right."

Identical eyes stared at each other from across the divide of Fate. "Sorry, man. But you're going to go back, right?"

"Don't worry, just shut up for a minute." He closed his eyes. The book. It must be the book. Cas was way too excited about that book. He opened his eyes. "You guys seem like you have your heads screwed on straight, so tell me, I'm the human half of this human-angel situation, and even I know not to go messing around with some old spell book because I think it will fix things. Everyone should know that, but nobody does, am I right?"

"Okay."

"Sure." Adonis rubbed his eyes. "Honestly, it gives me a headache to look at the two of you at the same time. Are we close to knowing where you got off your track so we can get off on ours?"

The Other Dean shot him a look. "So spit it out, what is it?"

"You don't wrestle with goddamn Tinkerbell, that's what."

"is this some kinky roleplaying thing?" Dean screwed up his face. "Are you Tink?"

"It could be a metaphor," Adonis was saying. "Clap if you believe in fairies?"

"It's not me or him. It's grace. Grace with a capital G. He tried to nudge Grace somehow. Way above his pay grade."

But the words were roaring into his ears as he landed back in the motel.

"Where have you been? Cas isn't answering. Balthazar isn't answering. You've been gone for almost a day. I was worried sick."

"Not to worry. Just a slight case of the bends is all." Dean said, stumbling straight to the bed and lying down with the pillow over his face.

"What is up, man? You don't get to disappear without telling me what's going on," Sam said angrily.

"Sorry, Sam, I didn't get a note from the Time Lords before they spit me back into this reality."

He tuned in and out of his brother's spluttering.

"Time warp. Get with the program, Sam, I don't have the energy to explain it all right now."

"Did someone hurt you?"

Dean sat up quickly and held his head in his hands. "Too fast. Yes. It hurt me to meet this other self that is so happy and has figured out how to be a hunter without being miserable. Yes, it hurt to be booted back to this sorry state of affairs that I call home, and see that if there ever was any hope of it being better, that ship sailed a long time ago. Imagine being looked at by yourself as if you're a total loser. So if you don't mind, I'm going to get some sleep so I can face this sack of sad that is my life."

Ten hours later Dean opened an eye to his younger brother coming in the door with two tinfoil wrapped sandwiches and a cup of coffee. "Good, you're awake. We need to talk."

Dean had been lying there rehearsing for the inevitable interrogation. "Hey, Sam, by the way, I've been having one-way frotteurism sessions with an angel in a dude-shaped package. Hope we're still cool, bro."

He took a bite of the fried egg sandwich and chewed slowly. Ow, his jaw still hurt. He swallowed hard and met his brother's gaze.

"I've been a little mixed up about things since Cas cured me," he began. "You see, when he tinkered around in there to cure my extra Deadly, we formed a bond. By accident," he rushed to add, and then said more slowly, "A vessel kind of bond. And it's taken some adjustement for both of us."

Dean tried to read his brother's expression and continued. "I thought it would be a good thing, because it might keep other angels away and might be an option for you, but I asked around and that's won't likely slow down Lucifer. So for me, it's more like I don't have to call Cas out loud, sometimes, or my senses are more attuned to cases." He faltered. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Oh, so that's all it is!" Sam exclaimed.

"What do you mean, that's all?" Dean knew it wasn't all, but was surprised by Sam's reaction to the part he'd told him.

"All this time I"ve been thinking your intuitions and weird behavior were coming from the Khan."

"Are you high?" Dean almost choked on a crust. "The Khan is a hobby, that's all. What? I'm not allowed to have hobbies?"

"You've never had one before. Not an intellectual one, at any rate."

"Exactly! You went through all kinds of phases. Don't you remember when you were about 14, 15, and you carried that book around with you for months. What was it? Something having to do with a whale…"

"Moby Dick? I was never into Melville."

"Shamoo, Camus, that's it. _The Stranger_. It was like your magical talisman against me and dad and everything that pissed you off. As long as you had that book, you could see yourself as whatever—angsty, intellectual, who knows. Plus I know for a fact chicks dug it."

Sam blushed. "What with Michael wanting to try you on for size, I kept thinking this was the sneaky way for them to do it. The whole army of armies myth, with the Great Khan at its front."

"Congrats, Sam, that has to be the wackadoo-est thing that I've ever heard."

They had a good laugh and Dean concluded by saying, "You have an overactive imagination, friend. Next time you cook up some crazy suspicion, just ask me." Then he paled.

"Are you all right?"

"Fine. It was a mind-bending trip, and I got hit a few times," he rubbed his jaw where Adonis had socked him good. Actually, he hurt all over. Guess being forcibly thrown at an alternate universe with the hope it'll stick will do that to you.

They began picking up their breakfast. "I guess I did go overboard," admitted Sam. "I was so worried I did a protection spell on you when you were passed out drunk—you should have seen yourself: blood, feathers, oil, myrrh, all over you, and you snoring away."

"What kind of spell was this?" Dean stopped with the empty coffee cup in his hand.

"I got it out of one of Bobby's books. It was an experiment, because I wasn't sure it would keep out angels if it was designed more to prevent demonic possession. I did it on both of us, but obviously it doesn't repel angels." He noted his older brother's fists balling up at his sides. "What is it?"

"Since when do you operate on me without a patient consent form?" he exploded. "Since when do you experiment with unknown spells on a human subject, much less your brother?"

"Dean, calm down. This was when you were monosyllabic and a mean drunk. You wouldn't talk to me. Come to find out, you couldn't. But it didn't take. I'm sorry for not asking, but it's a moot point."

"No, I'll tell you a moot point. Whether you had other plans, because you're going to sit right here and figure out how to undo that spell." The paper cup had attained the density of a diamond in his fist.

"What just happened?" Sam asked bewildered. "We were all cool, you've been touched by an angel and lived to tell the tale, I dig it, and then, everything is not cool."

"Because it did take!" Sam stared at his fury dumbly. "I'm not sure how, but whatever you did is messing with Cas, and I'm personally not cool with the fact that I'm making him sick. And that makes me feel like crap. Just because he's not at the driver's seat of me doesn't mean things aren't getting passed back and forth over this bond—where to go for the next case, and yes, whatever this spell did to me. Get Bobby on the horn."

His brother was still sitting there looking at him. "Give me your phone." He dialed Bobby.

"Hey, Bobby, no, this is Dean. You remember a spell you cooked up with Sam about six, seven months ago? You might? Well find it and uncook it. Keep my shirt on. I spent almost a day being hurled to an alternate timeline again and again until I realized that I am the worst-case scenario Dean Winchester there is. No, you listen: none of this had to happen if you two didn't—Oh, don't worry, I'll put Sam on the line. Here." He shoved the phone to Sam's ear. "Call me when you've figured it out and I'll tell you where to meet me. "

He scooped up some of their ritual gear and slammed the door.

"No, Bobby, I'm still here. No idea what's going on either. Except it's something about Cas."


	9. Chapter 9

"Do you feel any different?" Sam asked anxiously as the smoke died down in the abandoned factory.

"Not really, but it's not me I'm worried about, " Dean said, brushing the feathers off himself. "Did you really smear dove hearts on me while I was passed out the first time?"

"No, it was the—never mind. Cas still looks terrible." They both gazed over to the circle of flames where they had summoned the angel against his will. He had dropped out of the sky and into a heap and not moved since. "Did my spell do that to him?" Sam asked worriedly.

"No, not directly. Hey, help me put out the flames and get him into the car. I'll drop you off and take him to a hospital. When the angel runs out of juice the vessel they're using can get seriously hurt."

"Listen, Dean, I feel bad," the younger brother said when they were in the car.

"I feel bad, too, Sam," Dean glanced to the passenger seat. "I shouldn't have gotten so pissed at you. I've done plenty of things to help you without asking. If I had the words to explain how little things snowballed into this avalanche of the last 36 hours, I would. Here, get some sleep with a clear conscience. I'll call you with any news."

Dean drove from Yuba City, California, and headed to the desert somewhere in Nevada, where he called Sam. "Listen, man, they patched Cas up and then Balthazar swooped in to take over as nurse. He thinks the few words Cas activated from that book set him back so far he needs some kind of major angel antidote or he and his vessel aren't going to heal very fast."

He listened to his brother's sorrow and wished he could take back his harsh words from the day before, among many other things he regretted. "Okay, it will be fine, trust me. But I've gotta be honest with you, Sam, I need a breather. I'm on my way out to Las Vegas for some nice wholesome mindless entertainment. Can you hold down the fort for a couple days? Absolutely I'll check in with you. No, I won't go in the casino that threw me out last time. Thanks for understanding."

After the stop in the desert, Dean continued on into Las Vegas, where he stashed the car in a long-term parking lot and emerged into the heat and with Cas, who was staring at all the lights and gaudily clad people.

"This is like a playground for adults_," _Dean explained. "Oh, check that one out!" Castiel obediently turned his head to examine a woman in a striped clingy miniskirt and tank top. The woman looked over her shoulder and smiled.

"I think she likes you," Dean said.

"No, I think she likes you," Castiel replied and sensed the human's twinge of worry. "Don't worry. Balthazar has everything under control. Stop worrying for two days."

"Do you think we'll have time to do everything we want to do?" Dean asked as they entered the hotel of his choice and he forced Cas to not be distracted by the tacky décor.

"A room, please, double bed is fine," Castiel said to the receptionist. "Where can I get a decent steak around here? Not one of those deals for tourists, but a good meal?" he asked the woman as she processed his card.

"McGinty's has a pretty good steak. You've been burned by one of those shoe leather buffets before, I guess?" she replied and handed back the card.

"Anything looks good at 4am, but I'm trying to pace myself this time, honey," Castiel told the young woman.

"Hope you have better luck with that than some," she smiled. "Here you go, room 413. Enjoy your stay."

After Cas closed the door he said, "Are you laughing because I made a fool of myself in front of that woman?"

"No, Cas, it was so funny to have my thoughts go through you before they came out of my mouth. You did perfect—only someone that really knew me would notice the slight delay. I'm amazed that you can seem so natural as me, when you usually seem so—stiff—in your usual body."

"Normally I am not sharing command, as it were."

"Then if I'm your copilot, why can't I move us onto the bed?"

"If we shared motor control we'd fall flat on our face." Cas paused. "We do have a lot of things to do, even if sleep isn't necessary." He began unbuttoning their shirt.

"You know why I already think this is awesome?" Dean said from the corner from which he was now observing Cas moving his body.

"Yes," the angel said, depositing the shirt on the chair.

"See, exactly! I don't have to say all the things I want you do to."

Cas moved the hands slowly up and down the thighs, moving closer to the center. Quick to chase a reaction from the human, he undressed completely and marveled at what it was like to share the human's enjoyment, experiencing for the first time the pleasures hidden in the flesh he'd seen as a vehicle. "This is… nice." His voice came out rather breathy.

Dean thought it was better than nice. Something about having two consciousnesses inside the same body meant that the nerves and muscles and –oh!—became rich and fascinating. No one else would know exactly how to touch him unless they, too, were in his body, which was saturated with so much light he'd had Cas stop several times on the way there, just to stare at his own face in the rearview mirror. Two minds looked out of his eyes. How could no one notice that regular old Dean Winchester's body was the marionette worked by something really not human—

"You are not merely regular, Dean," Cas said and shifted another one of his virtues into place. It must be Beauty because the sensations rippling over him took on a new edge, it couldn't just be his two hands making his body feel like—

The pleasure multiplied like an endless set of mirrors facing each other. Dean's soul opened as it had every time, and this time, Castiel could feel it without the human needing to be flayed open by pain. It was two waves crashing into each other and then retreating, merging back into a watery world where they would each keep a few molecules of the other. It was enough.

"I see what you mean about wanting to lie still for awhile afterwards," Cas said.

"It's a good thing I can't produce this effect on myself alone, or I'd never get anything done. " Dean sent the thought lazily down a neural pathway saturated with contentment. He was sure it was the naughtiest thing he'd ever done, but couldn't place why.

"I think depravity requires a precedent," Castiel said in response. "We'll have to make up a word."

The arms embraced him, and they lay for a few minutes and then took a shower that had their body shuddering with enjoyment.

"We have a lot of things to do," Castiel reminded him and toweled them off without further distraction. They emerged in a clean shirt and made sure to say hello to the receptionist. Shortly they were in Mesopotamia.

"I believe they call this Turkey these days," Cas thought to Dean excitedly. "I've been wanting to show you where it all began."

Dean had the odd experience of a foreign language coming out of his mouth fluently while he understood the sense but not the words. Castiel exchanged some American dollars with a street vendor who sold them bottled water and a scarf.

"I don't want you to get burned," the angel said, and then proceeded to superimpose his memory of the beginnings of civilization on the mixture of modern and timeless they saw. Dean was just beginning to glimpse the way time had two sides like a coin for Castiel. On the one hand he saw settlements and peoples grow and wither and regrow in the blink of an eye. And on the other, everything had more deliberate clarity than he'd ever been able to see.

"Angels used to gather and watch the humans attempt to harness the land or slaughter each other in a more orderly fashion. We watched them make a utilitarian vase into a thing of beauty. Saw them think beyond their own survival—sure to be short—to the next generation and the next, amassing knowledge so that the whole human enterprise advanced."

It was relaxing, Dean thought, to listen to Castiel speak to him at length in this private way. He felt the rocking motion of even the things he didn't understand well. "So humans have always been stupid?" He didn't know if that made him feel better or worse about his time.

"Stupid and surprising," Castiel said from where they had reappeared a moment later in Japan. "I've never heard of this thing 'Harajaku.' But I find myself unable to look away from it."

"Remember what we practiced," Dean admonished. He had forced his companion to copy and reproduce typical human patterns of eye contact.

"There is a mathematical formula at work," Cas had said about eye movements.

"Whatever, you can't stare right at people the way you do." Dean was glad Cas had his equations, because he wouldn't be able to stop staring at the gorgeous Japanese girls in their wacky street fashions. "Oh my god, what I wouldn't give to live here," he moaned internally. "What's the monster situation like here?"

"Like all island nations, there are a lot of water spirits…. " Castiel trailed off as a lascivious fantasy consumed a good portion of their shared consciousness. "I don't want to get in your way," he said as a girl in some bizarre makeup and a short skirt came up and they had a brief conversation in Japanese that even Cas could handle on his own—where he was from, what he was doing in Japan. "Would you like me to take this further?" he asked Dean privately.

"No! I told you about that deva who was squashing people together starting with a touch. Stay a step back! Tell her you're not interested!"

They moved on down the crowded Tokyo street and Cas tried to calm his friend. "I've told you, vessel bonding is one in a million. If you wanted to bed someone—"

Dean looked at all the flawless young women and struggled. "God, Cas—your mojo plus my mojo in bed with one of these girls—in one body or two-sounds hot as hell, but there's no way I want someone else squashed in here. Besides, you and I weren't supposed to happen, and look at us."

Castiel rotated a different part of himself other than truth into place for a moment—he didn't want Dean to know he was touched by the human's protectiveness. "My turn," he said.

"What's so special about this place?" Dean asked, surveying the view full of nothing.

"Rural Kenya is not very interesting today, but look closely at the ground here." The angel directed their enhanced eyesight to the ground, and Dean was able to discern—

"No way! You saw the dinosaurs!" and

Castiel warmed himself in the human's excitement bubbling around him. "Of course. Fascinating creatures. This species we're looking at hasn't been discovered yet. It was related to the elephant but had wings."

"Dude, we've got to claim it! We can name it after us!"

"Do you want to spend the rest of our time trying and failing to get someone to believe us so they will excavate it?"

"No." Cas identified the tickle he was experiencing as Dean's disappointment. It was good to not be chasing far behind each of the man's changes, but there were thousands of nuances to map.

"Why did the dinosaurs go extinct? If humans were the plan all along, why mess around with pterodactyls? Why—"

"I don't know, Dean. Did you know that the angels have a saying: 'Humans invented the word why and they've not stopped bothering us with it since'?"

"You guys just did what you were told and never asked questions? That explains a lot. Guess that makes us sort of like, what's the word—"

"Idiot-savants," Cas completed Dean's thought as he found some modern elephants for the man to see in the wild. "No. Something more complex than that."

"Take a deep breath," Dean ordered and they breathed in the smell of the sea on the coast of Brazil. "I would have killed for a lungful of ocean air when I was fifteen. There's something about girls in tank tops and bikinis, street food and loud music—it's this instinct that hits you over the head when you're that age, and like a lemming you have to go to the beach when it's summertime."

"I do feel some unusual contentment," Castiel agreed as they wove in and out of the very scantily clad beach-goers. "You're interested in that food—we can try to buy some."

"No thanks," Dean shuddered at the memory of their first attempt to co-eat. Castiel simply wouldn't chew the way he would, and it made him feel like he was drowning. "Maybe something that doesn't require chewing."

He let the angel convince a street vendor to take their American money and felt the divine sensation of a tropical ice slide down their throat. "This makes me want to get a room, it feels so good," Dean gasped.

They found a place to sit in the sand and he ordered Cas to take off their shoes and socks. "I wanted to go to the beach like any other kid so bad when I was fifteen that I actually called all around to Dad's friends. I had them cook up these elaborate rumors about some sea-monster picking people off Venice Beach. They must have felt so sorry for me, wanting to be a normal kid just once, and I was prepared for any punishment when Dad found out it was a hoax."

"Was he angry?" Castiel asked, wiggling their toes in the sand and studiously avoiding looking at the woman wearing a few strings and nothing else.

"No, I kept waiting for him to give me a lecture about wasting money and time while there were demons to be fought, but I had time to go in the water and eat cotton candy and impress girls at those dumb shooting galleries and other carnival games. Compared to the other guys my hunter training made me look like a god for a little while. After a few days, Dad sat me down and said he was proud of me for my organizational ability in pulling this scam off, and if I ever used it against him again he'd make me pay."

"When you think of your father you worry about what he would think of our situation," Cas said gently.

And with their feet in the sand and the sound of people shouting in the waves, the two had their long-postponed talk about what they were doing together.

It took about a minute.

Their shared nervous system quickly pieced together the last few months without being hobbled by their usual limitations.

Dean reproached Cas gently for using the spellbook to remove him from their shared timeline. Cas explained the ancient and dangerous magic he'd been willing to unleash, and why he would rather do anything than continue the pattern of abuse Dean had suffered in Hell.

Dean shared a few choice sentiments about anyone, angel or not, messing around with old books, and made some colorful threats to Castiel if he ever did something so stupid again.

"Why couldn't you talk to me?" the human asked, but he knew why.

"I also feel as though some loud static is no longer distracting us," agreed Cas. "Your brother has much unexplored talent with spell-making. He cast the equivalent of a minefield between us."

"And we were hopping around like idiots trying to avoid a danger we couldn't see," Dean finished the thought. "I'm a big coward when it comes to change, but there was me wanting and not wanting to want. My life is hell and I get a gift delivered to my doorstep, and I promise myself every time will be the last time? So that I can go back to having a bunch of nothing? Even I'm not that dumb."

"The package the gift came wrapped caused you great difficulty," reminded Cas.

"If we could have just sat down like this right from the beginning-" Dean forced away the memory of his miserable confrontation with the other version of himself.

"Yes, we could have spent some more nice moments like this one," the angel agreed soothingly. "I do feel the heat, you know—I'm not made of stone. Going in the water is a fine idea."

They waded in and Dean relaxed, letting Castiel's sure strokes move them through the water like it was nothing.

"It's not nothing. It's where life began."

"Don't tell me what your angel-vision sees in the deep part; sea urchins and things freak me out."

Castiel began to float and switched his inhabiting virtue from truth to beauty. Dean saw the sun glittering on the in patterns that he could see as clear as day. There was so much…

"Cas, I just want you to know this is, I mean you are—"

"I know."

They smiled and tasted salt on their lips.

They floated there for some minutes and Cas reminded him, "We should stop in so your brother doesn't worry."

Smelling of the ocean they reappeared in the harsh desert air of Nevada. "Had any luck?" The receptionist asked them as they passed through the lobby. "You bet, sweetheart," Castiel said. "I'm the luckiest man in Vegas tonight."

Quickly, they washed off the salt and hit a couple roulette tables on the way to their true destination. "Remember, only win a little or we'll get beat up for cheating," Dean told the angel, who arranged to win and lose a few times until he came out with $10,000 at one table and $11,000 at another casino.

"The slot machines would have been more direct; and I know you to be very skilled at poker," Cas said.

"I'm too thrown off my usual self for poker, though I guess you have a perfect poker face," Dean replied. "And they'd be able to tell if you messed up the machines. Nice work, though. Cash always comes in handy where we're going."

They stared out of the same eyes at the woman gyrating in front of them in tassels and a g-string.

"Why is this so endlessly compelling?" Cas asked, having been given leave to stare in this one venue.

"I don't know, but let's do this together at least once a week."

With Castiel watching his lascivious imagination, Dean felt his erotic daydreams take shape and weight. It was all he could do not to ask Cas to run back to their room. The way the lights played off the glitter on the dancer's skin, the way the music melted into the whiskey as it rolled down their tongue.

"Now's a good time," Dean said.

"Hey Sammy," Castiel said over the music. "You're missing out on—what's your name, baby?"

"Yolanda," the woman drew out slowly from her red-painted lips.

"Oh, god, Sam, she's—what? I've been pretty lucky so far, we'll see if I get luckier and still come out ahead. Everything ship-shape with you? I've had a few, nothing epic. Nobody's escorted me out yet. What's that?" Dean forgot to feed words to Cas because he got distracted by a particularly nasty move from Yolanda. "That's real good, Sammy, I gotta go, sorry."

"If you hate lying to him so much," Castiel began.

"I can't do it over the phone, Cas. Now that I know what I think about—"

"Us," the angel supplied helpfully.

"I finally have something to say to Sam. Let's not ruin the rest of our time anticipating that conversation, okay?"

They were at the point of getting up to go to their next destination when Dean said furiously, "Turn your head to the left. Say hello to the guy in the baseball hat. Name of Phil."

"Dean Winchester, how the hell are ya?" Dean was glad that Castiel didn't react to his inner shrinking away from the massive clap on the shoulder the other hunter gave him. "You? All alone? In Vegas? Nobody's gonna believe me." He turned to the waitress. "Coupla beers, honey."

"Good to see you, Phil. Actually, I was on my way to a very hot date," Dean had Castiel say with complete sincerity. "Nothing says I can't look before I touch, does it?"

"Sounds like a plan," Phil said. "I'm taking a day here in Hunter's Paradise to get me some cheap and easy myself."

Dean tried to soothe the revulsion he felt coming from Castiel's reaction to the coarse statement. "Well, we've all got to find our own way, as my dad used to say. He always said you were a hell of a hunter and a prince among men."

"Dad actually meant that sarcastically, but don't tell him that," Dean confided in Castiel.

"Something looks different about you," the hunter was scrutinizing his face,.

The angel took the wheel for a moment while Dean panicked. "I got a lot of sun today. You must not be used to seeing me relaxed after a day off."

"This must be one amazing gal to unwind you, Dean; jeez, your nerves have nerves," the man said with what Dean assured his companion was his habitual lack of tact. "Does she, you know, could I try her on for size, too?"

With an immense effort, Dean wrested control from the angel, who was beginning to fit his wrath into place in their shared body. He downed the beer quickly. "Thanks for the drink, bud, but I've got this exclusive thing going and it can't wait. Hope you find someone, too, man."

The angel made them reappear in the desert so that no one would be in danger of being smited by accident.

"What a disgusting attitude—he thinks he can just insert himself into others' activities as if he would be welcome!" The angel pulverized a stone.

"He's a pig, I may be a heartbreaker, but my father taught me better than that." And to distract from the warm feeling Cas' protectiveness gave him for a change, Dean said, "Listen, he sensed something was off. These hunters always do. In case he decides to change his mind and hunt me, do you want to go to my special request destination sooner rather than later?"

"Very well," the angel said Dean looked around.

"This isn't a Led Zeppelin concert from 1969," Dean objected. "This isn't anywhere." They were on top of a rock formation looking at a barren landscape.

"That's because I overruled your request," the angel said.

"Cas! We both know you barely have enough juice to time travel for a few minutes. That was my dream you just overruled."

"Perhaps I know you better than you do yourself," Castiel said. "Keep your head down, but look!"

Over the crest of the empty horizon a cloud was barely visible. At first it was only an overhang of dust that gradually brought the scent of horse dung and unwashed men and-

"War. I know that smell," Dean breathed it in. "That's Saturday night, for me. You didn't!"

The angel basked in the awe and happiness surrounding him from the human. "We can only stay a few minutes. This is very long ago."

Dean watched something begin to take shape and from the dust form itself into Mongolian warriors in all their—small—glory.

"Why are they so little? And that trucker was right: the ponies are ridiculous."

"Human nutrition has improved quite a bit," Cas reminded him. "There he is."

As soon as their eyes fixed on the warrior riding towards the rear of the horde, Dean felt a thrill he would never forget. He was so busy staring at the man that he scarcely noticed the tide of men was turning slowly.

"Oh my god. The Khan is coming this way! He saw me! What do I do? Is this bad?"

"I didn't foresee this," Castiel said. "I should have thought that ancient people are more sensitive to the presence of supernatural beings. But they also take its appearance more in stride, so hopefully this will not be too remarkable for them."

"What if he shoots one of those arrows at us?"

"I'll frighten him out of his wits."

They watched the mass of warriors pool around them until their leader approached on horseback. He looked at their odd attire and spoke a few words.

Dean had never wished he knew Mongolian and could take the driver's seat more fervently than he did while listening to Cas converse with the Khan. All he could do was examine his reddish hair and blue eyes set off by sun-weathered features and prominent cheekbones. Inside his body he was paralyzed.

The Khan dismounted and moved with an easy, bowlegged gait to look up at Dean's taller body. In the few moments it took for him to approach, the Mongolian had sized the stranger up as another warrior. The years of training had Dean's muscles telegraphing tiny movements of readiness on their own, and the angel knew his own quiet intensity was taken by the Khan to be a coiled serpent.

"Nice day, isn't it?" Dean understood him to say, and Khan smiled.

"I am from far away, but still your fighting prowess has reached there," Dean heard Castiel say as he made the slightest bow of their head.

They came to back in the desert outside Vegas.

"Dammit, Cas, you couldn't have held out for a few minutes longer? We were _talking to the freaking Khan,_ and we didn't get beyond 'it's a nice day'?"

But he couldn't be upset for long, because Csstiel was greatly weakened by the experience and that meant Dean felt pretty rotten himself. "What can we do, Cas, talk to me, we can't get stuck here in the desert," he urged the angel, who was stuck on their hands and knees.

"You could let me touch your soul," the angel said nervously.

"Isn't that what you've been doing for two days?"

He closed his eyes so he wouldn't see his own hand enter his abdomen and gratefully shared what he had to give back for this rare time away from being Dean Winchester.

In a few minutes they were well enough to reappear in their hotel room, where they made a fleeting world out of all the visual stimulation they'd received from their travels.

Sam heard the knock at the motel room door. He removed his laptop from his lap and opened the door. "Cas? Glad to see you're up and about, but since when do you knock?"

"Sam Winchester?" Castiel said in a strange voice. He extended his hand. "Jimmy. We need to talk."


	10. Chapter 10

Dean drove back to California feeling like being ping-ponged between dimensions hadn't been such a waste of time after all.

Ever since he'd seen the upscale version of himself, he'd felt rock-bottom ashamed of his life. But now, 18 years too late, he'd gone off on his own for a couple of days, and he swore that he felt more like his own man, more like "that Asshole Dean," as he called the other one. Dean felt strangely unwilling to apologize for what he had chosen for himself.

He had the windows down and the breeze running through his hair, and this was about the best he'd ever felt. There was someone to look forward to—everything was more interesting when shared, he was discovering. Dean was already planning new escapades for himself and the angel whom he was going to claim as his own when he got back to the motel with Sam.

It was nerve-wracking in the sense that introducing anyone to your family is awkward and exciting, but sometime in the last two days Dean had gotten serene and he was planning on sailing that wave to shore, no matter what Sam said.

He and Cas had separated in the desert after spending some more time wandering around Vegas and comparing their impressions. Their plan had been for Cas to jump from Dean's body straight back to Jimmy's, as they had done in the desert on the way in. But Cas had just said Balthazar was delayed in bringing his old vessel so he would go straight to them.

Dean was a little weak when he tried to walk around, but sitting in the car he didn't feel the adjustments his body was making now that it was not inhabited by a celestial being. The asphalt rolled out just for him like a magic carpet. Damn, life was good for a change.

He pulled up to the parking space in front of the room he'd rented with Sam what felt like a lifetime ago. Just as he was nearing the door, Sam stepped out.

"How was Vegas, man? Looks like you got some sun," Sam said.

"It was good, I didn't spend every minute holed up in the casinos this time, but enough to come back pretty flush."

"Stone cold," Sam said, all friendliness dropping away from his demeanor. "You never used to be like that, Dean. A stone cold liar. To me." He was shaking his head.

The older brother's heart sank. How had Sam found out? He'd made an effort to be remembered wherever he went in case Sam called to make sure he was really in Vegas, and that's where he really was some of the time.

"I really was in Vegas most of the time," he objected, but Sam looked hurt. "How did you know? Did Phil Crabtree tip you off?"

"Dad's old friend Phil did call me to say that you'd met some special lady and not to be surprised if you got married while in Sin City. No, I called around and you had me totally fooled."

"Then what?" Dean asked, not sure what was happening but positive it wasn't good.

Sam opened the motel door, revealing Uncle Bobby, Balthazar and Cas.

The energy coming from the angel hit him all at once like someone poured a bucket of bad on his head.

"You knew," he said with only his eyes to the angel as he put his bag down and tried to find the wind that was just knocked out of him.

"We had an unforgettable time," the angel's eyes responded in kind.

Dean was aware that his family members were staring uncomfortably at this ocular conversation that was proof of his intimacy with the angel. He wrested his eyes away and looked around the room. "Is this an intervention or something?" he asked aloud.

"Do you need one?" Bobby asked with that hardnosed Socratic way he had.

Dean accepted the drink his uncle handed him and went to go stand in the slot that had opened up near Cas.

"I had a visitor while you were out," Sam broke the silence. "Jimmy was pretty freaked out by how his vessel situation had changed recently. It wasn't exactly what he signed up for."

Before Dean could reproach Balthazar for not vessel-sitting properly, the angel spoke. "There have been some new developments. I thought Jimmy had a right to make some inquiries once he was well."

"Before we get to that, I need you to know something," Bobby cut in. "Sam and me, we don't want you to think we're here to judge you. I wish you'd been more open about things, and I'll let Sam speak for himself about his feelings on that, but you know better than anyone: family is family. If you had dragged some stripper home from Vegas and called her your wife, she'd be family. And we know Cas a lot better than that. I would have set an extra place for him on Thanksgiving gladly."

"Except we wouldn't need an extra place," Sam said with confusion and hurt in his voice.

"And you're not going to make it to Thanksgiving," Bobby said. "Not like this."

His emotions in a riot from the different reactions Bobby and Sam were having to his relationship, Dean downed his drink in one gulp. The angel beside him was oddly calm. Cas probably was wearing a different virtue than usual. Something perfectly empty and accepting. The opposite of hope.

"The Heavenly Host is assembling against you both as we speak," Balthazar took over. "They are dead serious about using you both as a precedent, warning against future unnatural unions. That's the bad news," the angel said with a wan smile.

"The good news is, you have a choice," Bobby said. "All this has happened pretty fast, but you need to make up your mind pronto." Sam opened his mouth but Bobby jumped back in, "and we're here to support you either way."

"Romeo and Romeo had their brief affair, and now they have to choose death together or life in exile from each other," Balthazar said gently. Dean had a sense that things had really gone south while he was away on his one intimate getaway, and that the angel had done his best to give his old friend that one chance to see what intimacy was like.

Maybe he was getting more attuned to angels in general, because a flash of understanding between him and Balthazar made him sure he was right.

"Except it would be Romeo singular," Sam said testily.

Dean couldn't even concentrate on his brother's discomfort right now. The optimism that had been sweet and bright on his tongue just minutes before had a final taste that made his tongue crawl. He held out his glass and Bobby poured him another. He knocked it back and set it on the nightstand near him.

"If you wish to be my vessel, we will die." Castiel spoke for the first time. "And if you choose not to, we will be spared, though I doubt we will ever be out of scrutiny. The power you and I experienced without the spell in the way, over the last two days—it did not go unnoticed."

"You knew the whole time?" Dean asked, not caring that his face was a battleground of emotions.

"Perhaps not the whole time. We moved around quite a lot, and I was distracted." Castiel's face seemed more mobile than usual. Dean wasn't the only one who noticed the slight smile and softness to his features. "I wouldn't go back and change anything."

"What about you, Dean? Would you go back and change anything?" Sam asked reproachfully. "Like maybe, not lying to your brother left and right?"

Bobby put a hand on the younger Winchester's arm. "That's a conversation for later, boy. Now, Dean, you want some time alone with Cas to talk about this?"

Castiel's little finger grazed the top of Dean's hand, and he felt the impact of that first public touch explode like a gunshot in front of his two family members. Dean jumped slightly, but it wasn't out of shame. He was suddenly aware that he would always have some stranger in between them. His hand squeezed Cas' briefly, and a current of sorrow about what they had gained and lost passed through them.

"Guess you made your choice, then, brother," Sam lashed out.

Dean scowled around the room at anyone that might have a problem with that silent tactile conversation and then dropped his hand to his side.

"I run away for the first time in my life at age 32. For less than 48 hours. We do everything possible so that no one will worry; I check in with you regularly," he said to Sam. "Cas and I are both probably the most responsible nose-to-the-grindstone people you'll ever meet. And you think there's even a chance that I'm going to jump off Lover's Leap and leave you and everyone holding the apocalypse? Now that's stone cold, brother."

"Who knows what you really mean anymore," his younger brother said.

"So how strict is this separation going to be?" Dean asked Balthazar.

"In the short term, very strict, I'm afraid. And then there is Jimmy. Whatever new level of intimacy you and Castiel achieved in the last day or so, he felt it through his vessel bond to Castiel. He feels something is slightly different, beyond his adjustment to the idea that his angel inhabitant was—romantically involved—" Sam looked green. "With someone, Castiel had a difficult time entering Jimmy as a vessel. Chances are if Cas keeps changing on some subtle level, he won't be compatible with his old vessel any longer, or perhaps to no one else besides you."

Dean was nodding while he tried to recover from the irrational jealousy he felt about the bond he'd never thought of before between Castiel and his other human.

Cas slipped his fingers between Dean's and they left them there.

"Then we have your decision, Dean, so I think we should all clear out while you say your goodbyes," Bobby said, grabbing Sam, who was transfixed by the sight of his brother holding hands with an angel in a man's body.

"No, wait, I need to say something," Dean said. All of a sudden it was like what usually happened in the middle of a fight. His mind snapped into this clarity that couldn't be shaken, shattered or second-guessed.

Everyone turned. He cleared his throat. "If Cas and I could have talked about all this from the get-go, I wouldn't have kept this from any of you, especially you, Sam, not once I knew what was what. But no offense, that spell had us not knowing if we were coming or going. Driving back here I was excited about telling you."

"He had decided he would tell you in person today," Castiel said to Sam, but the younger brother twisted his mouth at what must be the idea of the angel being in his older brother's head.

"But things weren't normal; when are they ever? So in answer to your question, Sam, no, I wouldn't change anything about my sorry excuse for a life. Not even this."

Dean grabbed the angel to his right, and when their kiss had concluded, he said, "Now get the hell out and stay gone for awhile. Thanks for your support."

Balthazar responded with a grin to Dean's nod of thanks. Sam was dragged out by a surprisingly solid Bobby.

"You feel relieved to have done that," Castiel said when they were sitting on the bed.

"Actually, I do," Dean admitted and then his brow darkened. "So all this time we've been in one of those three-way bond-sandwiches and I didn't realize it."

"Jimmy has not seen anything you would feel to be compromising." The angel was squeezing his shoulder comfortingly. Dean leaned into the touch while thinking how much more human and spontaneous his friend seemed.

"Yes, that is why we are slated to be killed," the angel said. He reacted to Dean's noting his thoughts being read so clearly. "Yes, when we are attuned to each other, even in separate bodies, we can still communicate somewhat."

"Then you know what I'm asking," Dean telegraphed to Cas.

"Yes," the angel answered silently. "An encounter such as we have had in the past in my room does not seem to be asking too much of him."

"Is he awake?" Dean recoiled.

"No," the angel ran his hand through his companion's hair and down his back, remembering all the hot spots of Dean's nervous system.

"This is not as good, but it's pretty darn good," Dean thought to Cas as they undressed each other slowly. He had never seen Castiel's vessel without clothes; he was never sure he wanted to. But now Dean concentrated on seeing the contours that were revealing themselves to him for the first time as an accidental but no less instructive truth.

"You see, you are changing too," Castiel gasped as their skin came into contact full length.

"Must be," Dean said while trying to read the other body's reactions. The angel could be wearing a toothbrush as a material manifestation for all he cared. This was the same one who had been half of him. This winged light he could see when he closed his eyes, it was his home.

"We should be respectful of Jimmy," Castiel said, and only then did Dean see that their bodies were doing everything they could to become one, it didn't matter how.

"Damn it all, Cas, why do you have to show me how far I'm willing to go and then not let me go there," Dean asked throatily as he arranged their hands to produce maximum effect. "I wish I didn't know I wanted that."

"I can erase that memory. I can erase all your memories of me if it would make it easier." The angel's words came calmly but Dean was moved by the expressions now moving across his face. He had made the blank-faced Cas bite his lip, and gasp and-

"I hope it's not the last time, but even if it is, I never want to forget it," Dean said while they lay together in each other's arms.

Balthazar appeared in the middle of the room.

"Sorry to cut things short, but Castiel…"

"They are coming to punish me in some way," the angel said in the same warm tone they had been using while lying furled up in the sheets. "Remember what I told you."

Their lips met, and then the angel dressed quickly, moving without shame in front of his old friend. Balthazar was looking at the human in the room anyway. He held back a moment after Castiel vanished.

"What is it?" Dean asked, floating in that empty calm he'd noted in Cas when he first entered the motel room. He was only wearing the corner of a sheet and couldn't image why he should care.

"You and I are going to be in touch soon," he said, and then followed with, "I hardly need to tell you to be brave."

Only after the other angel was gone did Dean realize Balthazar's lips hadn't moved during the last sentence.

He had no time to contemplate one more bombshell of the day, because a few moments later a sharp knock came at the door. "Are you alone? Are you decent?" asked Sam's voice.

Dean pulled on a pair of pants and a shirt because he knew the alternative would upset his already-upset little brother, picked up a little around the bed and then opened the door to Bobby and Sam.

"I'm going to head back in a minute via Angel Express when Balthazar is ready, but you and I are going to have a talk, mano a mano, real soon," his uncle said. Sam slammed himself into the bathroom and Bobby continued in a lower voice, "He's all kinds of messed up, and most of it has to do with all the elaborate lies. I know—" Bobby held up his hand. "There were circumstances. Try to be a champ about the learning curve, though."

Dean gazed at his uncle with a new respect. "I always knew you were cool, Bobby, but—"

"Actually, my jury's still out on how I feel about this, but it's not my deal, y'know? I'm gonna hit the books hard the second I get home, but one thing I already know is, you look good, Dean, real good," and the older man's voice revealed some trace of emotion as he clapped him on the shoulder. "You bring the drinks when you come to cash in on that chinwag."

"Sure thing Bobby," Dean said in a louder voice as Sam emerged drying his hair from a quick shower. Balthazar reappeared and they hugged briefly and Bobby waved goodbye to Sam before shutting the door behind him.

"You want to do this here, or do you want to hit the road?" Dean asked.

"Road's good. I cleaned up the creepies while you were out doing creepy shit."

They threw their stuff together and checked out in silence after that comment.

"You wanna drive?" Dean paused at the Impala. His brother shook his head and folded himself in the car. It was going to be easier to hash this out if they didn't have to look at each other.

"Ask away. Moment of truth," he said when they were out on the highway.

"Are you gay?" was Sam's predictable first question. "After all your macho shit…"

"I'm into Cas, that's all I know. Doesn't matter what vessel he's wearing—"

"That's an image I'd like to burn out of my head," Sam groaned. "I mean you like it, right, walking around with an angel walking you? Phil said you had stars in your eyes like you'd met 'the one.' I didn't understand at the moment, but now-that's not even kinky. That's sick."

"I gave you a terrible time over Ruby, so this must be my payback," Dean said calmly. "You don't plan these things. It wasn't easy for me to accept that I'm getting closer to someone who's not human. It's like bestiality in reverse and I wasn't anxious to break that taboo. And what would you have done, honestly, if I'd said, 'Hey, brother, I was all over Cas a few minutes ago, and I liked it'?"

"About that. You were time traveling or something when I was following you. Balthazar wouldn't confirm it, but I gather that that is possible. You went to those lengths—"

"To have a few minutes alone? Hell, yeah. And it was so mentally healthy for you to shadow me everywhere? You know now that I had plenty to occupy my mind on those walks."

"We're heading to New Mexico, by the way," Sam said. "Evil doesn't take vacations."

Dean gave a beckoning gesture with one hand. "You can keep it coming, bro, I'll let you know when I've had enough."

And Sam did. He poured out his worries about his own vessel situation, which he felt to be overwhelming when his brother wasn't there to help him carry the burden. Sam admitted that he'd assumed he had his brother all figured out.

"Who has a sexual identity crisis at this age?" Sam asked.

"I'm kind of dumb, for one, and secondly, you know how long it's taken to break in Cas to the Winchester way."

"What is that nowadays? We both know that the only way things work is for us to be on the same side: transparency, trust, whatever it takes so that we can go in there and fight the good fight without having to wonder if you've got my back."

Dean laughed. "I called you three times a day the two days I was gone. You know, this reminds me of the smug version of myself I met in that other reality. When he needed to take time away from hunting, he took it. No apologies. He started doing it as a teenager and eventually Dad adjusted. I guess the other you did, too. Take pity on me for not thinking of doing this before."

Sam stretched in his seat and chuckled. "You have been having some sort of a mid-life crisis-not that you're old! But you missed out on more stuff than I realized. The apocalypse is kind of a bad time for it, don't you agree?"

"It's a perfect time for it! I may not have much time to figure some basic things out."

Dean listened to his brother's tirade continue. Even the play-by-play reaction to his physical display with Cas didn't bother him very much. He started wondering how long he'd be able to keep this up before the finality of his separation from the angel hit home. Finally his brother fell silent.

"Are you going to be okay?" Sam asked after awhile.

"I think I'm still high on angel dust or something, because none of this has hit me yet. Let's give it a rest for a little while. I'll let you know if I need to talk."

They drove a long ways in silence except for Sam complaining about the radio. "It's not on the station," he complained.

"Then fix it," Dean replied. They stopped to get some food and he requested that they get it to go. When they were settled on the hood of the Impala with their sandwiches and drinks, Dean cleared his throat.

"Now my turn. Don't worry, I'm not going to chew you out." At the mention of chewing, Dean took an experimental bite of his grilled cheese and almost choked on it.

"Does your jaw still hurt from your time travels?"

"Nah, my insides are all in a twist from, you know, hosting somebody else. Solid food seems too rich to me right now." He pushed the sandwich away and drank his orange juice. "I'm sure I'll be all right in a day or two." He took a deep breath. "If there's any good that's come from this shitty situation, I want it to be something for you."

"How does your interspecies relationship help me out?"

"You cast a spell that fucked Cas up. Big time. You had him in a tailspin, and you got between a bond, which is one of the most powerful things around."

Sam frowned. "I thought you weren't going to bitch at me."

"So fuck another angel up, okay? Screw with some other angel's ability to bond." Dean gazed at his brother until understanding began to sink in.

"How can I be that good? I don't know what the hell I'm doing."

"So that's my next point. There are people out there who really know the deal about spellcraft. They make night school occultists like Bobby look like nothing, no offense to him."

He staved off his brother's objection. "They're out there, and you and I aren't exactly nobodies in the supernatural world, for a couple of reasons. We start looking these people up. You learn from them, they help you harness your talents. Meanwhile I've got my own inquiries to make in the apocalypse-prevention field. And there's a whole country full of creepies and crawlies that we would gank anyway, but are just lining up to be experimented on."

"Are you going to be the smart brother now, too, in addition to the sexually ambiguous one?" Sam complained.

"Trust me, you don't want to be the one who had to meet his perfect double. But that guy helped me out, Sam, if for no other reason than he made me aware that I was making choices without being aware of it."

"Like sleeping with an angel?"

Dean was going to ignore these comments as much as possible. He couldn't fault Sam for being scared that his big brother, his rock, had shifted somehow. "No, like why don't we ever ask people for help? Because Dad drummed it into our heads—'only trust family.' Well, we're not like him; we get along with people. There are plenty of people we like and respect who aren't blood relatives. Why not open the doors and cooperate? The other me had a worldwide network of people wracking their brains about how to stop the apocalypse."

They gathered up their trash and got back on the road, with Sam driving. Dean was dozing when he heard his brother's question. "Why did you want to eat outside?"

"You've followed me enough times to know that I really dig being outside at night for some reason."

"Is that some music of the spheres thing?" Sam asked.

"Something like that," Dean murmured and slipped off to sleep with his arms wrapped around him.


	11. Chapter 11

Dean's first case after suffering his own personal apocalypse was in New Mexico. Sam had developed a sort of obsession about weird weather patterns as likely signs that the apocalypse was progressing, so when he heard from other hunters about abnormal rain, he'd jumped on it.

"This isn't our usual kind of case; I don't think anyone has died. At least I assume that's why this hunter lady I talked to passed on it," Sam said to his brother along the way. "You okay with that?"

He knew his brother was asking about his extra sense, but all his senses were telling him to do was keep moving. The directions had taken them straight to a Navajo community where it turned out some well-meaning kids had been trying to use traditional means to fight climate change-or more specifically, do something to bring the rain that their area hadn't seen for months. It had been raining on one house for a week so far, and the amount of water from that narrow downpour was already screwing up their land worse than the drought.

"Let me handle this one," Dean had told Sam, who accepted that they had no badge that would give them jurisdiction anyway. "Ya'at' eeh," he pronounced carefully, the only Navajo the gas station attendant they'd talked to on the way in knew. "See you got yourselves a problem there." He nodded to the one-house cloudburst and the odd mix of dusty and waterlogged land.

"Yeah," said the woman who was standing a little in front of the people who had come to greet the dust cloud the car kicked up. She was short, about 5'2", with chin-length dark hair. She was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt over an army-green t-shirt, jeans, and rubber boots. Dean judged her to be early forties and nobody's fool. "You're not National Weather Service. They took one look and high-tailed it on out here. And they drove a Hyundai."

"You'll find we're made of stronger stuff, ma'am," Sam said.

"I can see that," she said, eyeballing the younger brother's physique. "What do you want, exactly? Nobody comes out here without wanting something."

Sam opened his mouth and Dean cut him off. "Actually, yes ma'am, I was hoping to get some help on a little problem of ours that might be a problem for you as well. In exchange, you let us handle your problem." He nodded at the ten-yard-radius rainstorm. "Couldn't be Tonenili, right, he's more of a trickster kind of fella? Water's his department, but he would get bored from doing the same thing for so long."

Sam made every indication that he would take the backseat from now on.

"That's what we can't figure out," the woman said while her observers exchanged a look that seemed closer to resignation than respect. "You'd better come in for some ice tea and A/C."

The woman, whose name was Josie Slick, was the local sheriff and had enough clout to eject a couple of complaining voices out of the sheriff station with just a look. "They don't like your kind," she said, motioning to a deputy to leave the pitcher of tea. "Hunters. We had some like you maybe 40 years back. Came riding in like the cavalry to save us from a similar situation, kids trying to get in touch with their ancestors, and in that case, raising a bunch of pissed off ghosts."

"What happened?" Sam asked, pouring more tea.

"They floundered around for awhile and didn't seem to get that we didn't want the spirits destroyed, just sent back to a more peaceful sleep. Caused a hell of a mess, because we're knee-deep in spirits around here. My mother told me they were having ceremonies for months to get eveyrbody back where they were supposed to be once those fool hunters woke up half the ancestors."

"We were trained in the black-and-white school of thought," Sam said wryly. "Things have been looking a lot more gray recently."

"I can see that," Josie said. "You boys look hungry," and when Dean begged off from the solid food, claiming a stomach ailment, the sheriff just looked thoughtful. "Tell you what," she said when Sam was finished. "You take care of our problem with a minimum of fuss, and I listen to your problem."

"This is kind of weird, isn't it-a whole community clued in about the supernatural and trying to cooperate?" Dean said to his brother. "I could get spoiled."

It turned out to not be easy at all. Josie had figured out easily enough what the kids had done to bring the rain there the first night. She had a vastly more qualified set of supernatural consultants trying to convince the rain to stop raining in that one spot, but nothing they tried worked.

"You know those dreams where you're naked and you have to talk in front of the class?" Sam hissed at him at dinner that night hosted by a local family. "This is like that, except that it's a postgraduate class in a subject we don't know crap about."

"I wish I could download all the information in these people's heads. We're going to have a lot to think about." Dean was trying to leave Sam to his somewhat thankless sessions with a local spirit leader, which were hilarious to him, but he knew were very uncomfortable for his brother.

"Of course, it's the male form of rain-niłtsą' bikąi. Any kid could see that from the strong downpour and the thunder," Cecil the medicine man said when the ever-helpful Sam showed up with his laptop and his research.

"So maybe we could try summoning the female kind of rain to kind of balance it out," Sam suggested.

The 50-something man who seem to have never met a dramatic gesture he didn't like threw up his hands and cast his eyes heavenward. "Who have I offended, that I have to babysit the second coming of the Vikings," here his eyes encompassed all of Sam, "when I should be tending to my people."

That was the first and last interaction that Josie snd Dean watched between the two men. Their giggling got them both banished by an imperious gesture from the medicine man. "Cecil loves an audience; he's going to have fun with your brother," the sheriff said that first afternoon.

"I was hoping, sheriff, that you'd give me your permission to get the lay of the land. I promise not to do anything. You've got our weapons in your safe." He sensed the woman's misgivings. "Maybe there's someone on hand to give me a tour?"

The woman's face brightened. "I know just the one."

Actually, his tour guides were the package deal – 16-year-old Darla was pushing 85-year-old Miss Harriet in a wheelchair.

"Hello, ma'am, I'm Dean. I hope this is an all-terrain chair of yours because I want to go all around as far as I can on your land," Dean said doubtfully, surveying the woman's fragile state of health and evident near-blindness.

"Oh, you're one of the monster slaying twins!" She clapped her hands and then uttered two unpronounceable words. "Which one are you?"

"Whichever one is the most handsome," Dean said.

Darla rolled her eyes. She evidently had better things to do than track through the dirt. "We have a lot of myths about these monster-slaying brothers. But I don't think they were talking about a couple of preppy white boys."

The girl was rude. But her great-great-grandmother proved a surprisingly useful resource. She knew the land very well from memory, and could see some spirit realm just above it even better. Dean listened to her tell a dizzying number of myths that had probably been told during the very period when Cas and his buddies were watching people try to be better than animals. The memory of the angel caused an unwelcome pang and Dean forced himself to pay better attention.

The old woman stopped speaking. She turned her blank gaze from the dusty fields whose history she had just been narrating. "My young friend, you shouldn't worry so. How much do you know about native myths?"

"Other than what you told me in the last hour, which I'm not sure I understand very well, my dad had me memorize a lot of stuff-mostly about people turning into animals, things like that."

Darla sniffed and pulled out a fresh piece of gum. "You can believe that noble savage crap if you want—but there's tons of blood and gore, and sex too."

"Hate to break it to you, but I think all myths are like that," he replied. A few weeks ago, that attitude from a young kid would've annoyed him, but now he was concentrating too hard.

"Yes and no," the woman said as they came to a rather deep hill and Dean took over pushing her chair. "Our myths, and indeed most native myths, have so much change in them, much more than any tradition I've heard of. You're right, people change into animals, but animals change into people, everything is very fluid for us. There are many different versions of the same myth, and they're all true, as far as we're concerned."

Dean was chasing a thought he couldn't quite formulate and also the sense that he and the old woman were having a conversation on several levels at once. "So how can more than one thing be true at the same time?"

"Because it just is," said the girl, who then mouthed so her blind grandmother couldn't see, "asshole."

Dean stopped the chair. "If you have two different myths, and, say, the versions get mixed up together somehow, will they come out different? Is that even possible?"

He was squatting in dirt at the eye level with Harriet. Dean was sure she saw something in front of her, and he would give anything to know what. "We believe anything can have a way of becoming something else, don't you think-time, the land, the entrance and exit of gods. And yes, the gods themselves. Everything changes," she said looking straight at some part of him and smiling around a set of dentures a bit too large for her mouth. "If I were you, I wouldn't be worrying too much about the fact that nothing is as you thought, and nothing may ever be the same again. Change is normal."

Dean was aware of Darla staring at the unusually intense exchange between him and her relative, but this was too important for him to worry about that. "What's going to happen? Did I mess everything up? What do you see?" Dean felt tears pricking at his eyelids—he hadn't hoped to meet someone who he could actually share his fears with.

Miss Harriet reached out and patted his cheek with perfect aim. "I don't know, young man, but don't let change itself be your enemy."

Then they had explored a little bit more territory, and gone back to the old woman's small house for tea that she took hot and he took cold. Darla had a Diet Dr. Pepper and a menthol cigarette.

Dean waited impatiently until the woman turned in for her nap and he could gracefully excuse himself.

"I don't plan on playing tour guide for the rest of the day," the girl said, holding her hand over her cell phone.

"Miss Harriet gave me more than enough to digest, so I'm gonna have a think somewhere.I won't mess anything up. Look," he lifted up his shirt, "I didn't even bring my gun, so not to worry."

The girl sniffed and he left. Dean's mind was racing, and he was doing his best not to fall prey to optimism, which at this point in his life would be fatal.

Over the next two days, he and Sam saw each other at mealtimes and in the trailer the sheriff had arranged for them to stay in. He knew Sam was getting a crash course in Navajo spirituality, with an emphasis on the crash, and it made him feel bad, because all Dean did was walk around.

Of course Miss Harriet would have given her verdict on the visiting hunter to everyone, and Dean knew it would be good, so Josie and the rest of the community let him alone. He kept coming back to the story the sheriff told him about the luckless hunters who'd stirred up a hornet's nest of spirits while trying to flush one out. The air and the ground were thick with something he was too inexperienced to be able to separate into human ghosts and spirit animals, and for all he knew, nature spirits, demigods on up.

It was very confusing, and not entirely unprecedented. What he was discovering he could do by putting the radio between stations, and what he heard while are walking on a clear night, was pick up glimpses of voices that sounded like nothing but static to his brother. For Dean, it was just frustrating because he couldn't make out what they were saying.

He spent a lot of time watching the miniature rainstorm that had by now, washed away the roof, the second floor and part of the foundation of the house, and was working on the foundations of the houses next door. The area could use the rain, and some people were trying to catch it in barrels. A few enterprising guys were working as hard as they could to create irrigation ditches, pipes, and other makeshift constructions to spare the houses in the vicinity, and if possible, not waste water.

Not everybody was anxious to have anything to do with the clearly unnatural water pouring from the sky, however. Some refused to go near the place.

Sam had talked to the teenagers who were more surprised than anyone that their rudimentary spell had even worked, much less that it wouldn't stop working. Billy and Freddie had probably less knowledge of Navajo spirits than Dean, so they weren't much help.

"No offense, but are you going to help a brother out at some point? Cecil's a genius but he's kind of a dick. What does your sixth sense tell you?" Sam asked his brother as they washed up for a dinner Dean still didn't feel up to eating. "I also think his wife is pretty annoyed at me because she suspects he likes 'The Viking,' as he insists upon calling me, a little too well. Do you get a vibe from him?"

"How would I know, Sam? They didn't pass out gaydar with my package. Wait! That's it!" Dean jumped up and down and the trailer groaned in protest.

"What?" Sam asked. "This is a gay thing?"

"No, dumbass, marital problems. We have a marital situation."

Over the next few minutes they hashed out a likely scenario and went over to Cecil's house, who happened to be the one hosting them for dinner.

"Basically everything in your cosmos has a male and female half, right?" Dean asked his hosts. Everyone had stopped offering him solid food, and he drank a glass of milk. "Tell me what happens when the male and female halves don't get along."

"Well, everything is a partnership, just like between people. There are complimentary roles," Cecil replied.

"Why that means you can't do the washing up occasionally, I don't know," his wife, Geraldine, interjected.

"I don't see why we have to go through this again," her husband said, evidently not liking to be taken down a notch from spiritual know-it-all to henpecked spouse before the guests. "We've tried to talk with the female rain spirit, niłts'a ba'at. She showed up, it should have balanced things out, but it didn't."

"And how easy would it be to tell if she was lying?" Dean pursued.

"Our spirits do not lie," Cecil said self-importantly.

"And I know from experience that they don't tell the whole truth, not even because they mean to hold something back in every case, but because they can't express their truths to our limited awareness." Dean had so much first-hand knowledge of this phenomenon from his crash-course with Cas, that he wasn't sure he was expressing himself well. He gave his brother an appealing look.

"Let's say, if for some reason she and her husband, so to speak, weren't getting along. She might not be trying very hard to calm him down or whatever she would do to make him stop raining."

"Of course you wouldn't get it, Cecil," Geraldine said with a bittersweet laugh. "I practically have to take out a billboard before you notice I'm mad about something."

"That's exactly what we think is going on!" Sam exclaimed. "A marital tiff between Mr. and Mrs. Rain. He's in the doghouse for something –"

"Except in this case, she has him locked over the Johnsons' house," Dean finished.

Poor Cecil, the two brothers knew they'd stolen his thunder, but it couldn't be good for the thunder storm to be trapped in a 10 yard radius indefinitely. "We were hoping you could clue us in on what the husband did, and what the equivalent of a bunch of roses would be for Mrs. Rain." Sam wisely appealed to their host's authority, and the spiritual leader recovered quickly and was on board with the plan before dinner was over.

He let them in to his beautifully maintained library, which revealed a disheartening amount of lore – Cecil had been trying to digitize everything he can get his hands on for years, but still there were so many possibilities of what could have gone wrong between the rains.

Dean did his best to sit in Cecil's study for one of the all-nighter research sessions they used to pull like nothing, but he got antsy. "This is going to take forever, you guys. Let's just ask her."

"We've used our very best techniques," Cecil got all huffy. "Her story is that everything is fine. You're going to twist a spirit's arm? Not on our land."

"Do it again," Dean asked the leader, hiding his nervousness at this step he didn't necessarily want to see pan out. "Let me watch you summon her."

Grumbling about the expense of the ingredients for the spell, Cecil took them to his shed out back where he worked his magic.

Dean told himself he was just nervous because the last spell he'd been near had him in a whirl for months and caused him pain he didn't want to think about. But when Sam, moving around with impressive confidence as Cecil's second in the magical circle, added one ingredient to the rest while the magician chanted, Dean heard it plain as day.

"I wish I could be of more assistance, but-"

"Yeah, ma'am, we've figured it out so you can cut the crap, pardon my French," Dean said for the horrified Cecil's benefit.

"What are you doing? You're going to scare her away or offend her, too!"

"It doesn't seem like it, because she's laughing."

"Dean, we haven't heard anything," Sam whispered, looking at him worriedly.

"Well, she just said that he was going to stay there unitl he knew what he'd done, so unless either of you can throw your voice like a chick, I'm hearing her loud and clear."

For once, Dean wished he was around people who didn't believe he was telling the truth. His two companions believed him all right, and it didn't sit well with either of them.

"Don't just sit there staring at me, what do I ask her?" Dean snapped.

Much like other spirits he and Sam had dealt with in the past, the spirit they'd summoned wasn't helpful on her own initiative. It was all about asking Mrs. Rain the right questions. Eventually they found a place that she considered sacred to her where they should plant a certain herb and scatter a type of corn. It was all way beyond the Winchesters, but they gathered they were putting one small thing in balance that sort of puffed her up and would allow her to gracefully exit from her stalemate with her husband.

Due to global warming, the male kind of rain had been getting all the fanfare, causing heavy rains and monsoons much more than usual. Rather than blaming it on humans' dependence on fossil fuels, Mrs. Rain blamed it on Mr. Rain. When those two kids summoned her husband, she pushed him into the confines of that poorly constructed spell and left him there.

"She promises she's going to play nice," Dean said, but they heard the first soft patter of the female rain, a light shower, falling outside. People were coming out of their houses and heading towards what used to be the Johnsons' house. Soon the trapped raincloud was absorbed into the general scattering of droplets, but not without shooting out one bolt of lightning.

"Trying to save face while he ran away with his tail between his legs, I bet," Dean said, and caught Cecil's wife laughing a little too hard.

"Did you still need help on that problem?" Josie asked at his elbow.

"Miss Harriet gave me some good ideas already, thank you, but don't be surprised if I call you up some day asking for more help."

"Here's all that we know," the sheriff said, handing him a book wrapped in a cloth. "Old Cecil had a fit about giving it up from his library, but his wife is a tough cookie."

"So I gather," Dean said. "Would you mind releasing our weapons now?"

The boys were loaded up and on the road in no time, and the patter on the windshield had never sounded so friendly. "We didn't even have to gank anybody. Do you think that's why no other hunters wanted to take it?" Sam asked.

"All I know is, you've got your own intuitions, brother. This was a major find on your part."

It was too early to tell, but it might be the turning point he'd been hoping for. Before he could explain the significance of the book the sheriff gave him, Sam was bursting with ideas about their new strategy for dealing with the apocalpyse that he'd shared on the way out of California.

Once Sam had had time to think about his older brother's game-changing ideas, his little brother was excited about the idea that they could do something besides sitting back and waiting for the world to end. He even took it farther than Dean had dreamed of.

"We need to start a nonprofit," Sam announced.

"What?" Dean choked on his milkshake. It was a little too thick. "We don't have time to go legit at this late stage in the game."

"You said ask people for help, I think that includes monetary help for us and for Bobby, who's been running the operation on nothing. And when money comes in, we have to account for it."

He saw his brother looking at him as if he was insane, but Sam had been up much of the last two nights thinking about it.

"It stands to reason that all these hunters, obscure scholars and conspiracy theorists who know end times are coming would be willing to share their information and maybe a little donation for some of the main actors to try and figure out how to bow out from the show."

It took days to convince Dean. Everything he learned from his dad told him not to leave a paper trail, period. But Sam and Bobby assured him that sometimes the best place to hide was in plain sight.

And so, End The End, Inc., was born with the premise that he would never have to deal with any of the paperwork. The two other men and some trusted hunters took care of everything over the coming months.

In no time at all, Dean saw the game he played with his brother on road trips turned into a sophisticated computer game by some hunters' 14-year-old kids. "Gank 'em Up" became known under various names along the lines of "No Sympathy for the Devil." Some of the more technically minded people in what was becoming a wordwide network were feeding every ounce of information they had about the apocalypse into this database that would essentially play itself or a human, looking for outcomes where everybody didn't die.

The two brothers mainly stayed on the road like before. As Dean had suggested, they looked up experts in the whitest to the darkest magic, and every shade of gray in between. If they could get the person to talk to them, almost everybody saw that the apocalypse was a major crimp in their style, no matter how evil their usual activities were.

At first he had to convince Sam to try and learn something from the dark practitioners, but pretty quickly the younger brother lost all fear because he so much wanted to keep his greatest fear from becoming true. Dean was glad that his brother was able to feel empowered instead of passive about being Lucifer's chosen vessel, but it worried him a little bit because Sam had shown he had no sense of when he got in too deep.

In the meantime, Dean was the undisputed navigator. He drove without thinking about it, and they ended up in towns where there was usually the perfect triad: some wrong-side-of-the-tracks witch for Sam, a monster for him to practice his growing spell repertoire on, and an expert for Dean to consult.

He was careful not to let onto anyone, especially Sam, but Dean didn't believe in one thing they did.

He was sure the world is going to end. On some level, this was all some contest against the other Dean, that-know-it-all who was handling his own apocalypse so well.

The Dean in this reality only wanted to know that they all went down fighting after having done the best that they could as the idiot savants they were. And if the rest of the cosmos thought that humans were unpredictable, then they were going to use that to their advantage.

Becoming as sharp and as strong a fighter as he could was the best method he could think of for not thinking. That, and avoiding his uncle.

He stopped by Bobby's house once early on, when they were just setting up the organization. Their uncle's old friend Rufus was recently deceased, but that didn't stop him from showing up to find out what all the fuss was about.

The brothers had known the veteran hunter was well respected in the States, but they weren't aware that he had a very good reputation abroad as well. The addition of Rufus as chairman of the board for the nonprofit got them over any remaining misgivings people had about sharing resources with what was essentially the eye of the hurricane for the coming storm.

"I add a little transparency to the outfit," the ghost had said to the existing board members when he got involved. The joke never got old, and it was true: everyone assumed a ghost had no reason to steal money or even act out of self-preservation in the normal sense, so the old hunter assumed a leadership position. And, once they'd gotten him hooked up with voice recognition software, the disembodied spirit could do anything on the computer and the Internet that he wanted to with little strain. The brothers knew the old man loved to lecture these techie kids in charge of simulating the apocalypse.

The Winchesters were stopping by so Sam could try out some of his new skills on the apparition, trying to find ways to make Rufus stronger instead of weaker, which was the way they used to approach ghosts.

"Times have certainly changed," his uncle said as Sam moved efficiently around his magical space. "You're no exception."

The older brother was used to everybody telling him he looked too thin. "I've been seeing this hypnotist – she guarantees she can teach me how to chew food again. She calls it a trauma, but I know I got grossed out by eating with someone and can't forget about it. I took a bite of an apple and chewed it OK but I still felt like I was drowning when it was going down."

"At least you can still have this." His uncle clanked his whiskey class with the younger man's, which was mostly orange juice.

"Damn," the ghost of Rufus had appeared and was staring at Dean.

"Hello to you too," Dean had been hoping to avoid seeing the specter face-to-face for just this reason.

"Boy, you're all lit up like a Christmas tree." Rufus was transfixed.

There was something about being stared at like a freak by a supernatural creature that made his blood run cold. Dean tossed back the rest of the drink. "I've gotta be going. Sam's going to take the Angel Train to meet me farther on."

He left as fast as he could, with one bodied and one disembodied set of eyes staring at the back of his head.

"What do you see this time?" Dean asked Balthazar the next time they met up. He was compartmentalizing his life these days, and didn't want to hear theories from people who didn't know anything when he could get something like the truth from Balthazar, who could look at him from his 360 degre angel perspective.

The angel was his only connection to Cas, and though he'd requested not hear any news unless it was good news, the fact that their mutual friend was effectively off limits in conversation did not stop them from having things to talk about.

"You've been cultivating the virtues proper to a warrior, and you have no belief that faith, beauty or love will ever come your way again. I heard you last night, Dean."

"Did I hit the wrong frequency?" the human asked, panicked. The last thing that he needed was the Heavenly Host listening in on his Enochian lessions.

He sensed the angel in front of him shifting a little in his vessel. Now Dean could understand why the angels had such a hard time with human facial expressions. He was having a hard time grasping the nuances of angel gestures, but he thought Balthazar was looking at him fondly on the plane he had been practicing navigating with his eyes closed for months.

"If you didn't frighten the spirit out of me, Romeo, we might be able to do each other a world of good." His angel friend had held on to the nickname for Dean, along with some of his old flirtation. "No, you were transmitting on a solidly prayerful wavelength and those are always private for Enochian speakers. I only heard you for a second because our prayers coincided."

Their sorrow over Cas was not much better shared, so the angel asked brightly, "Ready for another walloping in swordplay?"

By far, the best thing in Dean's new life were the sparring sessions with his heavenly personal trainer. They trained on both the earthly level with Balthazar's vessel against his human body, and on the other plane that was becoming more tangible to him by the day. The angel let him use his sword, so that Dean could fight against a blade less likely to kill him. It felt good. All of his rage at everything he'd lost, everything he would shortly lose- he emptied himself and let something else move him.

It was that empty calm that he sensed for the first time so clearly when he walked into the motel room and saw a Cas resigned to his fate. That kind of acceptance was not human. Temperance, the angelic virtue was called. Maybe it was the sort of "eh" reaction to important things that always annoyed him about Castiel before. But from that moment, Dean began to understand it, and then court it as the only way to keep himself from blowing his brains out with their well-stocked arsenal.

"Ah, no rest for the holy," his instructor said. "I must go, so kindly return my sword. I wish I could tell if you're really holding up as well as you're trying to make out, but there are no precedents here. Practice those verb forms I gave you. Goodbye, cousin."

The angel's occasional references to Dean's transformation into something nobody recognized and everyone wanted to smite was really the only thing that unnerved him thes days. Whether the always self-serving Balthazar was grooming him as a minion for some personal crusade or vendetta, Dean didn't care. That was a nice thing about that particular angel: he wore his non-human-like directness more gracefully than the others. "Oh well, that thing didn't suit my purposes, better luck next time," was Balthazar's attitude, which at least didn't contain the self-righteousness Dean occasionally tuned in on with Angel Radio.

Sam was off doing his own thing, so Dean went for a walk and found some thick darkness and a clear patch among all the different types of waves bouncing around the earth. Dean wondered what it was like to stand on a hill on a clear night way back before there were satellites and cell towers and all the noise he had to tune out when he tried to tune in.

It was like Bobby's old radio set. He caught snatches of conversations while fighting to keep himself from saying anything. If it were known that he had changed this much, Dean was sure he'd be smited quicker than you could say "Jack Robinson" in Enochian. He didn't know how to say it yet, but he was working on it.

On these nighttime walks, which Sam no longer begrudged him, Dean didn't feel so alone. There was so much going on; the universe was so huge and so present. The light he'd found in the lover he refused to name even in his mind, he saw now that it was Cas but not just Cas that had awakened a recognition in his deepest self. It was properly his-he found it beckoning to him on clear dark nights, some ancestral land belonging to a lineage that had been cruelly suppressed in him.

Dean returned from his walk and hit the books. Military history and Native American myths were his two standbys.

There were plenty of crackpot history re-enactors and history professors for Dean to track down to learn the finer points of three-way battle military strategy, which was how he thought of their apocalypse scenario now. Except this conventiently didn't exist.

He'd heard enough about the Balkans War (Serbs, Croats and Bosnians were the three players, but as far as anyone knew there had been no pitched battles between the three) and the Three Kingdoms period of China (between 220-280 AD) that he had started schooling some of these people on the points they missed while assuring him that a three-way battle was impossible.

"Two sides always find a common enemy in the third," was the message he kept getting.

Which wasn't necessarily good news, because all signs pointed to the established order being freaked hte fuck out by the mixing of the planes that he and Cas accomplished without meaning to.

"Thanks for starting the rumor that Winchester boys are easy," Sam snapped at him on one of his bad days. "I've had demons knocking on my 'no vacancy' sign nonstop."

"At least your spell is fending them off," Dean replied mildly. He was hoping that Lucifer would feel like Balthazar did-that he didn't want to actually be changed by his vessel-and thus turn his sights on another vessel, but so far, it was only a theory.

Other intelligence suggested that the demonic world was pissed at having another front added to the battle they'd been warming up for for centuries and looking for a scapegoat.

"Don't tell me what's impossible. Tell me what's possible," he'd patiently (and sometimes less-patiently) asked the experts. "How do you turn two powers against each other while short-circuiting the fight?"

This, they were more comfortable with, and he always came away with too many ideas jumping around in his head.

Nowadays, when they were traveling together the two brothers had established a different pattern. Sam went out and had a beer, sometimes found a girl. Dean studied and walked, sometimes ran, in the dark. He wondered with sorrow whether he and Sam got along so well now, not because they were working to save the world, but because he had finally learned how to keep things from his brother.

As long as he was the rock his brother needed, Dean had trained his brother not to ask certain things, or at least not to expect a good answer. Especially, whether he was going to get off this monastic kick and get laid and eat a cheeseburger. "Come out with me, brother, it'll be like old times," Sam had tried to wheedle him earlier tonight.

He didn't want to know how different things would be if they went to a bar together. Besides, "I'm too plugged in to all this research," he said, gesturing to the bed littered with papers. "Pour one out for me."

Alone in a motel on the outskirts of Peoria, Dean alternated between his two favorite subjects: the Khan, and the book Josie the Sheriff gave him.

It was a collection of Navajo myths about the Monster-Slaying Brothers. Dean wasn't so vain as to think it was literally about him and Sam, but some of the similarities were remarkable. No, he liked reading about them going on a journey to meet their father the Sun, and the tests he laid for them. He rubbed his eyes and slept.

On the other side of the universe, Rafael got to the end of another long speech. "And for these reasons, among many others, you are an abomination. Confess your transgressions, Castiel, tell us how you achieved this sin and your punishment may be less."

It was clear to Castiel that the other angel didn't expect him to confess and probably didn't care either way. He was enjoying the attention and he was very much enjoying meting out the punishment. And his poor brother Rafael had no idea of this last element. Cas had never seen all this until he was captured.

In celestial chains suspending him above a pit, Cas could think strangely well when the torments were not too great. Rafael was at this moment very like the demon-administrators of hell, who admitted they enjoyed their enforcement.

"Do you confess?" Rafael roared. He was splendid, his brother was quite magnificent when he got angry.

The angelic knives pierced him. "Why?" Castiel asked.


	12. Chapter 12

Dean was out for at midnight run. He was discovering that the combination of motion and the dark night sky made him feel like he was almost leaving his body behind and taking flight.

He hadn't quite mastered that part yet, so he ran dark miles all alone.

For all the rigorous training he was putting his body through so that it would be silent and hard, it was the training of his mind that was the most difficult and the most rewarding.

When he was able to calm his many worries and desires, which mostly meant-when he stopped missing Cas- once in a while Dean could hear the vanished angel. He didn't tell anyone, because he didn't want that pitying look they all directed at him to get any worse, but he knew it was real.

A couple of days ago, while he was out running he heard Cas say to him in that unmistakable way as if they were once again sharing a brain, "You never told me how ridiculous we all are. Angels are some of the most self-important-"

At that point he heard the sound of Cas' laughter as he'd never heard it before. It was a combination of the bell-like tones of Enochian and the voice he used when he was in Jimmy. Androgynously sweet and masculinely scratchy.

A crackhead came up to Dean at that point, not sure whether to be concerned or check him for loose change, this guy in runner's gear who was leaning up against an empty building and sobbing. And laughing. Laughing because of the image his love put into his mind.

It was of Rafael in his usual male vessel, sitting at a table full of five-year-olds, each wearing a party hat. The angel, who wore a paper crown, was throwing a temper-tantrum because he didn't get his way at his own birthday party. It expressed more clearly than words the nascent human perspective of the lover whose angel-self Dean was coming to understand better every day.

On this night, Dean ran, and he let everything he kept under wraps free so that it could fly like a kite just behind him. It was taller than a ten-story building by now, this other self that was growing to mirror the changes that were making Cas half-angel, half-human in front of his horrified captors in heaven.

Dean's form on the angelic plane had thankfully been hidden from other angels since the beginning because of the Enochian marks Cas had made on his ribs, so if Heaven knew about Dean's transformation they were taking their time smiting him.

One of the last things that Cas did was tell what Balthazar the code, as it were, so that he could see Dean, too. And he was very thankful for this, if only so that somebody could confirm that he wasn't losing his mind, and that this other self was taking shape in a place beyond other humans' perceptions. Dean didn't believe it sometimes himself, but then he tested it again and again and proved he could see with another set of eyes over buildings and for blocks and blocks in any direction.

Like right now, he could tell you where a prostitute had just left her john five blocks east and four blocks west. And he could tell-

Oh hell, he knew Bobby was gonna come to him eventually.

And that the old man wouldn't mind picking a lock in Dean's absence to see what he was really up to.

Dean came to a halt. Oh, shit, if he didn't think it uncomfortable to run in the damn things, and now Bobby would see-

He sprinted most of the way back to the motel, and then slowed down so he wouldn't be too winded. He retrieved the bottle from the trunk of the car where it stayed all the time now except when form demanded it, and then took off his shirt because it would encourage the guaranteed comments about his weight as a distraction.

"Hey, Bobby, hope you didn't think I was running at BYOB joint here," he said, depositing the bottle on the nightstand and feeling his uncle's eyes on his lean frame while he walked straight to the bathroom. "Let me just wash off-I stink like a linebacker," he said to the man who settled on the bed. In a moment he popped his head out. "I hope I checked out on the search and seizure."

"So far, so good," his uncle returned, and by his tone Dean could tell that his visitor did not find what he had hidden in the bathroom.

He showered quickly and then reached for the plastic case with a magnet he had stuck to a pipe under the sink. The saline solution he habitually carried back from his drinking days. It helped him on many occasions look much less hung over then he really was.

With more dexterity that he had a few weeks ago, he put the contacts in and hoped the color was as close as he thought it was. He'd hate to have to explain yet another part of himself changing to his eagle-eyed uncle.

"Didn't see your car out front-I guess Balthazar is part of the surprise visit. Sam, too, I bet," he said, emerging in clean clothes.

Bobby already had the whisky out along with some ice. "There's some things I want to say, and there are some things they didn't want to say, so yeah."

Dean took a sip. "If it can't be said in a double entendre, best not to expect Balthazar to say it," he agreed. "And he, Sam and I are too busy when we're together. Balthazar's still trying to drum those angel sword techniques into our heads, which is a waste of time if you ask me, considering they've had millenia to practice." He met his uncle's gaze straight on. "I've gained 5 pounds in the last two weeks, so don't start."

"If you say so," the other man looked him up and down. "Those protein shakes Sam turned you on to making the difference?" He gestured to the canister on the table.

"I think so. I just tell myself it's all for the Cause so I don't think about the chalky texture."

His uncle shook his head. "I still say those cheekbones could cut glass."

"So speaking of the Cause," Dean got up to open a can of juice from the case he carried with him so he could add it to his drink. "I really am trying to get my nutrition, Bobby. So anyway, I think we need to step up the training sessions. Like, you train more people to do the training, so you're a kind of central control."

"Are you going to crown me king of the world next to keep from actually having to have a conversation with me?" his uncle shot out in an unusually harsh tone. "Dammit, Dean, you can't avoid talking about Cas forever."

That name. Those three letters. One syllable showed all his newfound strength and and extra senses to be merely additional surface area that ached with loss. "He's all right, sort of. I can feel it." He didn't say anything about the pain that he could feel sometimes too, which made things taste like metal mixed with ozone from time to time.

"Then you must know something nobody else does, because word around heaven is he's lost his marbles." Dean's mouth turned up at the corner, thinking of Cas' laughter. "And he's a guinea pig for every experiment they can think of, trying to figure out how he brought back Nephilism and managed to do it to himself using a dude."

Dean nodded. "I know about all that. We talked about it before he left because the Nephilim are the only precedent for us: the Sons of God who came down and mated with the daughters of men. He even made a joke about it supposedly happening because the angels were so irresistibly handsome," he said in a spectral voice. "But Cas is out there, and we're working on it—"

"You're not going to ever see him again," Bobby said with painful finality. "Dean, all this, this "let's fight the apocalypse with everything we got," it's our best shot, and I know more than anyone how dedicated you are. But I'm afraid that you're thinking we're actually going to storm the gates of heaven and rescue your fella. That's not going to happen, son, and I'm afraid for you to go on any longer kidding yourself."

"Listen, Bobby, I've told you, me and Batlhazar have a lot of stuff up our sleeves that we can't tell anyone right now, for your safety, but I promise—"

"Dean, the door to heaven is closed to you. And hell. But purgatory's going to roll out the red carpet."

Dean gripped the edge of the bed because his head was reeling—what Bobby said made no sense, though he couldn't tell him why. He was more like an angel every day. He belonged in heaven. He wasn't afraid of dying anymore because half of him existed on an angelic plane. "What do you mean, they won't have me? I was the victim, according to their mindset. They banish the victim, nowadays?"

Bobby set down his drink. "It's the only leverage they have to keep people from bonding the way you guys did—any angel who cares about their vessel wouldn't consent to these terms. They'll keep the mutated half for experimentation," Dean shuddered involuntarily, "and the human half gets eternity with the creepy-crawlies and other none-of-the-aboves that hang out there in Purgatory. Apparenlty they've got several warring overlords down there, because it's like hell without the rules, but they all agree they can't wait to see you."

His uncle knocked back another quick one, evidently a reward to himself for finally imparting the bad news he'd been carrying around for months. He took in the gaunt and muscled nephew who suddenly looked like a stick that had been snapped in half.

"Earth changes, but these few gatekeepers in the afterlife, they're still the same as they always were, son, they're not going to make way for whatever you and Cas are. I wish they would." Dean shot him a grateful look and went back to quietly coming apart. "But you've got a job to do, boy. And you need to find it in yourself to keep being the leader people see you as, or I tell you what, you're not going to get much farther on a dream."

Balthazar appeared. Dean felt the look they shot over his head. "Why don't you guys go out, since you're thick as thieves these days?" he asked bitterly. "I need to get out of here." He grabbed his keys, wallet and jacket and hopped in the Impala, leaving the other two to have a heart-to-heart about his wellbeing, which was probably how they got their kicks.

Dean drove the speed limit and took every turn carefully. He was abruptly more terrified of death than ever. There's no way he'd get these occasional transmissions from Cas in Purgatory. They must have insulation or something to prevent it. And the other inhabitants—it was like being stuck in summer school with all the rejects, forever.

He'd had his temperance virtue in place while Bobby was talking to him. That's where he spent most of his time now. Things didn't hurt so much when he hid inside blank acceptance.

But now Dean was pissed. Leave it to him to fall in love and have an entire universe use him as an object lesson! He pulled into the parking lot of a dive bar.

The kind of bar that existed all across America. The sort of place his old self couldn't stay away from.

"Hi," he said, sliding into a seat at the bar. "A shot and a beer, please, when you get a minute, Honey." The barmaids were always Honey.

The waitress was a strawberry blonde, ponytail with curls framing her face, a couple freckles, nice body, on the petite side. Dean watched the part of his brain in charge of such matters automatcially do its work, as it must have been doing all this time that he'd been avoiding people.

He looked around. This was the kind of place you could get killed for making a pass at a guy, so he was relieved that he didn't have to worry about that possibility. He settled back to drink like a man with a purpose. Alcohol made him feel strange these days—it didn't affect his angel-self, so it made the two halves of him feel like they were separating, only attached by a thread.

Dean found himself talking mostly with the waitress, not even trying to talk to any of the other women that hovered around at first, though he exchanged a couple of drinks so as not to be rude. He talked with Baby, Sweetheart, Princess, Cutie. (Kitten had been taken out of circulation.)

Honey was warm without being demanding. "Why is a handsome guy like you alone?" she asked, depositing a fresh drink on the counter. "You must have a girl somewhere, and she'll be mad that I'm keeping you on my stool 'cause I like the looks of you." She removed the empty glass. "Whiskey and orange juice, that's a first. You a health nut?"

"Kind of. Training for a marathon," was the excuse he gave when people wondered about his all-muscle physique.

"You better watch out, or I might not send you back to her-what's she like, anyway?

"She's like a little piece of heaven," he said, and relished the burn of truth going down his throat.

It went on for hours, this rehearsal for Purgatory.

The music and the voices all swirled together towards a beckoning drain. They would all go down with a slurp at the end of the night.

"Are you looking for a port in the storm?" the waitress asked shortly before closing.

"Maybe, Honey, but I'm not sure if I want to find it."

She nodded as if she'd guessed this too. "Don't mind me: it's a boring job, you have to find some way to entertain yourself. Some people play darts; me, I watch people."

"You must see a lot of darkness in a place like this," he said in a numb voice.

"It doesn't bother me none," she left to attend another customer in a way that he had to admit was quite nice.

"We're all carrying around something, and what would be left of us if we weren't? This one's on me." She slid a new paper coaster to him and he realized he'd been twisting the life out of the old one with his fist.

Only after she walked away did he see what she'd written on it:_ I think we have a lot in common, lover boy. Meet me out back._

Dean took his beer outside to consult with the darkness whether it was a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, or merely the closest thing to butterflies he had felt in so long. He really needed to hold on to someone and finish coming apart, and this waitress—he didn't even know her name—made him feel like he could and she wouldn't think less of him for it. Whether he'd think less of himself, he wasn't sure he cared right now.

He wanted to bolt, but forced himself to stay because this was all that was left for him. Dean looked at what would have been contentment to him months ago and felt contempt for his old self. Now he knew love. Briefly, but he knew it. Dean was planning on spending the rest of his days comparing the rest of the world to that glimpse of paradise, showing everything what a poor showing it made in comparison to Cas.

He felt terrible for letting this woman believe she could have anything in common with a freak when he heard behind him, "You don't have to be lost for a little while."

Honey, she slipped her arm through his and steered him two blocks. The upper half of himself was sober, and it led the lower part, which was mainly slowed down in this thick misery that lapped at his ankles. They stopped at an apartment building that stood behind a neglected lawn and reeked of second best.

She had him inside the door and before he knew it his hostess had some unassuming beer opened for him and was rummaging in the fridge for the makings of a sandwich. "You like ham?" she asked.

"Sure, sounds good," he said to be polite while looking at the simple furnishings. They were probably depressing but with his low standards at the moment they at least seemed honest. He saw a plaque on the wall that read Semper Fi.

"You in the Corps?" he asked jokingly.

"Naw, my boyfriend was," she said. "I lost him about a year ago. Afghanistan." And she slid the plate in front of him.

"I'm sorry," he said, finding it doubly hard to swallow an obligatory bite now that he knew he was eating a dead man's sandwich. "Wow, that's good, but I have to watch my gluten—it's a runner thing. This milk is sure hitting the spot, though. Mind if I have another glass?"

She got up and refilled his glass. "What about you?" she asked. "Someone either broke your heart and stomped on it good, or you lost somebody not too long ago."

"I did actually," Dean replied. "She was military as well." And suddenly there was so much more he wanted to say that it was good there were no words this nice girl would understand.

"Then she had a big heart; military types are always tough and tender."

"She got so she'd show that part of herself with me, yeah."

"Where did she serve?" the girl asked and topped off his glass again.

He took a sip of beer. "It was kind of like Black Ops, you know the sort of thing where you put your life on the line but if things go south, it's all on you?"

"But you were proud of her and that's all that mattered," his hostess said.

"We left a lot of unfinished business, and now we'll never have a chance to fix things," Dean said and swallowed milk around the lump in his throat.

"I don't know, isn't that what life's for, for us to keep trying to get a right as long as we have the chance?" She slid her hand up his arm and ended up in his hair. "We can make tonight a little better than it would have been if we were alone."

He tried to go back in time to a moment when that would have been enough. Before he came to expect there to be some other mouth behind the human mouth kissing him. Before he expected to embrace arms that could squeeze life out of him if he wasn't careful.

She took off his shirt, his pants, socks, shoes. She made it so easy.

Making it with this girl was smooth, undemanding. Dean never had tried less and it felt good to let her take control. She had some decidedly not-nice girl moves, and he lay back passively to watch her put on his own personal porn show.

When it was over she lit a cigarette while he lay there in a puddle. "Want to tell me about him?" she asked.

"Wha- How did you know?" he said with a tongue that was trying to get away from him.

She laughed lightly. "You only pause it like a mile before your pronouns. That's why I don't get—never mind."

"Why what?" Dean was struggling to formulate a thought.

She exhaled. "You bi guys are always the best. You don't get freaked out about another guy being in you. I wonder why it didn't work out that way with you?"

"Drugged. I've been—the milk," the thought slogged urgently through Dean's brain. "You roofied me!" he exclaimed slowly.

"Just a little something to help you relax and let him in," she said, stroking his arm.

Within his drug-induced paralysis Dean went rigid. He looked at the old armchair in the corner of the room. He'd noticed it when they walked because the scruffy upholstery didn't match the rest of the room. The ghostly young man with the military haircut was sitting and watching. Watching with hungry eyes the man his girlfriend had just gotten off.

Using his angelic self Dean pulled his body up slowly.

"Don't worry he's not jealous. Usually I bring guys home so that I get to be with him again for a little while. But Bruce also likes to watch."

The hunter used all of his willpower to conjure up the only defense he had at the moment.

"We could try again," the girl was saying, but old Bruce suddenly looked like he'd gotten the fright of his post-life.

"Who the hell is that?" the ghost demanded.

"Someone you should step fuck back from if you know what's good for you," Dean shot back. "Can I have a moment alone with your Dearly Departed-what's your name anyway?"

"Carol Anne," the girl said. "Is there something wrong? Don't hurt him—Bruce went through hell to come back to me."

"I won't lay a finger on him." Dean stood up with difficulty and shut the door behind the sheet-wrapped and confused Carol Anne.

"If you don't tell anyone what you saw on me, the lights, the whatever, I won't come back and kill you—for good this time. I may not look like it at the moment, but I can make good on it.," Dean growled while hanging on to the bureau for support. "Ask your ghost buddies who the hell Dean Winchester is and they'll tell you. And I've got more contacts than you ever will in the beyond, so I'll hear if you so much as nudge a Ouija board about it—"

The other spirit in the room threw the Marine across the room. Hmm. Dean didn't know his companion could do that.

"W-what are you? And who is that?"

"I'm the dude that will separate you and her for good, and it would be for her good. She's a nice gal and you've got her trolling dive bars for desperate guys to live out your fantasies. Is this how you treated her when you were alive?"

Bruce looked taken aback.

"And him? Nobody you want to fuck with in any realm, believe me. He invented badass and he'll reinvent it all over you. Count yourself lucky you didn't try to take him or me to the rodeo."

The girl knocked. "You fellas come to an understanding?"

"Yes we did," Dean glared at Bruce. "And sorry, honey, he's not really my type anyway."

The hunter had enough dexterity to pull on his pants, gathered up the rest of his clothes and lurched down the stairs to the street. He put on everything else while taking deep breaths of the reassuring night air.

On the two blocks back to the bar Dean's angelic senses began to compensate for the effects of the drug. His faculties were just beginning to go into motion again when he got in his car. The first thing he did was take out the contacts. Staring into the rear-view mirror at the blue eyes set off by sharp cheekbones and the red hair he knew lay underneath the brown dye, he saw the spirit flit back into place behind his eyes.

"Dammit, Khan, aren't you supposed to keep me from making an ass of myself here?" he demanded of the version of Genghis Khan's features he saw in the mirror.

The blue eyes widened.

"I think we've just had another of your brilliant ideas," Dean said to the self that was partially the Mongolian general he'd encountered briefly with Cas, and partially the modern-day leader of the apocalypse that he was trying to become. "We'll cut off the enemy's supply. They'll be paralyzed."

Dean drove back to his motel with a clear head and an optimism he would never have believed a few hours ago after talking with Uncle Bobby.

Once inside he drew the Enochian sigils for privacy and called Sam.

"Sammy? Yeah, I know what time it is. Listen. Listen! I figured out the answer to our problem. Which one? The one you've been burning the midnight holy oil on. Yeah, that one. Call a meeting of the officers. Tomorrow. Our adversaries don't know it yet, but we just took the advantage. Yeah, get some fucking sleep to you too."

Dean hung up. He didn't sleep much anymore. Probably it was like solid food—his angel self had overridden the human habit.

But the drug was still running through his system, so Dean got into bed and began his nightly ritual.

"Hello, Thursday," he thought to Cas. "It's never going to be good with anyone, never like it was with you."

Then he stopped himself—Castiel needed positive thoughts where he was locked up in a heavenly prison.

"I figured out how to match our strategy for paralyzing Heaven with a plan for doing the same to Hell."

Here Dean outlined the plan as he had been doing for each piece of their strategy to defuse the apocalypse that he, Sam and Balthazar had been assembling for months. Other than Dean's faith that his lover could hear him, the angel, the human and the in-between Dean were the only ones who knew every bit of the big picture because they each had a leadership role. Together, they decided to keep Bobby out of the loop because he would worry too much if he knew what they were planning. And their other partner had asked to be allowed to concentrate on what they did best, which didn't include wrestling with demons or angels.

His eyelids feeling heavy, Dean started to fall asleep, but not before thinking to Cas, "I'm not giving up on you, you hear me, Cas? Hang tight, Thursday." And with the spirit of the Khan guarding his bedside, the human half of Dean slipped into sleep.


	13. Chapter 13

When Balthazar ferried Sam to Cas' old room between the dimensions for their meeting, he was surprised to see his brother sitting on the couch with a big smile on his face.

"Look at you!" the angel said after he and Dean did that staring thing with their eyes that, up until now, was Sam's only reminder of this other transformation his brother kept telling him about. "Is this your first time traveling on your own?"

"No, I've made it up here a couple times," Dean said, his smile fading around the edges. "It's a good place for me to think."

"About Cas," was the understood meaning, but Dean shut out the sympathetic looks. "Pretty soon I can start carrying you around, Sammy."

"That's great. Where's the Khan?" Now it was Sam's turn to distract from his discomfort. More than once Sam had wished his brother wasn't complying so faithfully with his promise not to hide things anymore. This whole Nephilism thing—the Sons of God mated with the, in this case, Sons of Men and there were half-angels in the land—it was just crazy, and so Sam had chosen to ignore it. The whole thing was top-secret, anyway.

He heard his brother say something in Mongolian and looked over his shoulder to where the Khan had appeared. This was easier for him, in a way, this hardened warrior showing up from time to time and talking with Dean. As far as Sam was concerned, he'd been riding alongside the old general for many months.

Dean swore that what brought the Khan's spirit into his life was the trip he and Cas took, in the same body, back to ancient Mongolia. The military leader saw some hybrid angel-man thing that looked like Dean Winchester, and when he rose again as foretold, chose that person to lead the army of armies at the end of days.

Sam was of the opinion that the Khan had already chosen Dean and that link was what made him go back in time.

They both agreed that one day the younger brother opened his eyes to a weathered-looking spirit who smelled of yak, with his hands around Sam's throat.

"What the fuck?" Sam had yelled, feeling for a weapon, any weapon. "Dean?"

Sam and the spirit had destroyed half the hotel room in what he had to admit was a good fight, before a blue-eyed, red-haired Dean had popped up and the warriors had a good laugh over Sam trying to put two and two together. The Khan had a sense of humor, all right.

Either way, once the shock wore off, Sam had gotten a lot of mileage saying I told you so. The Khan understood what they were saying but hadn't picked up much English—other than the word "wackadoo," which he gathered from Sam's telling of Dean's dismissal of the idea the warrior was going to come back.

He hadn't counted on Dean starting to look like the Khan, but at this point anything about Dean's new sidekick was a welcome cover for his other transformation.

"The humans are so desperate they've called up a ghost as their leader" was the scuttlebutt Dean reported from his occasional forays onto the supernatural airwaves. "He's listening to fairy stories from the natives-Dean Winchester has really lost it this time."

Actually, Sam really liked having the old guy around. It brought back the older brother he had before acedia, before Cas, before Hell. The Khan liked women, booze and meat, just like the old Dean, which helped distract from the new Dean, who didn't really do any of that.

The spirit had Dean chasing skirts again (though carefully not catching any), taking the odd sip of whiskey (the spirit liked the smell of peach schnapps a lot), but the meat issue caused an all-out fight between the warriors, living and dead. Josie had pointed out to Dean from the beginning that warrior spirits tended to like their meat, and anyone hosting a spirit had to make accommodations. Khan had been a big proponent of a meat-based diet as an advantage over his enemies. The ghost's need for protein, which was accelerating Dean's weight loss, finally collided with a plate of Mongolian barbecue that made Dean retch at the sight. They compromised with the high-protein shakes Sam finally sold his brother on, and the yak-butter tea and Mongolian stews that they got at restaurants when they could, which made Sam want to retch with the smell.

The Khan also had a good sense of humor, which he was as likely to direct at Dean as at Sam. He enjoyed enlisting the younger Winchester to make Dean drop things in front of a pretty girl—or a likely-looking male, which produced even more hilarious results. He seemed to be able to make himself visible to certain people, but the women only saw Dean dropping his telephone in their laps, not the spirit who jostled him.

Dean had outpaced him since the beginning with their Balthazar-led sparring sessions because of his obvious advantages gained from his awareness of the angelic plane. But since the Mongolian joined them, Dean's fighting ability became a wonder to behold. Like right now, Sam was watching Dean kick Balthazar's ass, and he could attest to how hard it was to best an angel in swordplay.

"Should I dispatch you?" Dean was saying. He got the line out of one of those old swordfighting movies he and the Khan watched with rapt attention while Sam slept, but he'd had to put his foot down about the guys acting them out.

"You thought Spada Libera was Schivar di vita and vice versa," Balthazar grunted with difficulty. "Don't I deserve a second, if you have your mongrel, sorry, Mongol?"

Dean fought harder at the provocation about the Khan. "I'm sure one of your sex toys would love to sign up for the job. But you have so many of them. We could make a reality show, like the Bachelor…"

A growl came from the angel, who suddenly had the advantage, with his blade to Dean's solar plexus. "Watch your tongue, upstart," he said with real venom.

"Sorry, man," Dean said, and Sam caught his look that communicated their mutual confusion over Balthazar's motivation for leading the Cause. Still waters ran deep with that one, Sam knew.

"You aroused my wrath. It's good practice," and now the two sparring partners were doing that staring thing that made Sam so uncomfortable.

For anyone who didn't know better, they'd think that Dean, always prone to extremes, was finding an escape in running and ancient history. All that mattered was that they didn't want to tip their hand, any of their hands, early, before they'd ensnared Heaven and Hell in so much chaos they didn't know who to fight anymore.

They had heaven pretty much sewn up, according to Dean and Balthazar. Sam doubted it would be that simple. But Hell had been the stubborn problem.

"Where's Josie?" Dean was asking. The sheriff was an integral part of their plan, but they all knew she hated interdimensional travel and only consented to meet there because it kept from creating a link between the angels and the Navajos and other tribes. It would bring unnecessary danger to many communities and violate the terms of the treaty they'd drawn up.

Balthazar was staring off into space. "There she is. It's hard for me to see on their land."

The diminutive sheriff appeared with her mouth drawn in a tight line, beamed up out of a shadow the way Cas used to do with Dean.

"What's this all about, Dean? I'm right in the middle of mediating a custody dispute."

"We need to hold back the maneuver on Heaven," Dean announced. "We need to do an about-face with the Hell strategy." He and Khan exchanged a grin. "Need you to work on a different kind of spell, Sammy."

"No!" Sam objected. "All I've done for months is work on perfecting my binding spell! Me and Cecil and our whole network of magical practitioners. You want to tell the people that got hurt and got killed while we worked on the anti-possession properties that it was for nothing?"

Sam stayed awake at night, thinking about those people who volunteered to stir up demons and see if their network's spells would keep them out. Some didn't make it. He'd had to gank a few himself.

"It does seem very late in the game to change," Balthazar said. "What did you have in mind?"

"Well, no matter how hard you tried, and I know you tried, Sam, you said yourself there were too many variables to get your success rate much above 75% for a given demon or ghost, and the spell didn't always carry across different classes of spirit. So that's why we're going to start preemptively possessing people."

While the other three partners stared at him in disbelief, Dean gave a sanitized version of his experience with the ghost, and how the Khan prevented the spirit from getting in.

"Makes sense," said Josie. "We don't get demons on our land. Not your kind of hell-demons, but people bring do bring them back from elsewhere, time to time." The sheriff often traveled with an ancestor, but Sam had always thought it was a sort of quality control thing about her decision-making for the tribe. "We've got tons of spirits hanging around that would love to get involved."

"I don't know," Sam objected. He hated any kind of possession. "How can you be sure what spirit is possessing you? And how could we make this replicable throughout our network, so that people in Germany, say, don't call up a bunch of demons instead? That'll ruin us."

Balthazar was nodding. "I like it. If the logistical problems can be worked out, it's an elegant solution for cutting off Hell's access to meat suits. If they can't walk around and pass themselves off as people, they're going to have a very hard time conducting a campaign. We hit Heaven and Hell the same day, and the universe will be reeling for days."

Everyone turned to look at Sam. "Okay, if you're positive it will work, I'll get with Cecil and the others and make it happen," he said unwillingly. "On one condition. We hit Hell two days later than Heaven."

A spirited military strategy discussion ensued, with Dean translating the Khan's opinions. To Sam's surprise, the Mongolian sided with him.

"Great Sammy," Dean slapped his shoulder. "Who are you going to pick?"

Sam jumped. "Me? I don't groove on the possession stuff, you know that." Every one of his actions for over a year had been to avoid becoming the vessel of Lucifer. But even before that, Sam had been traumatized from birth by the intervention of the yellow-eyed demon, by his demonic possession experience, and every bit of his role as semi-demonic freak. As far as he was concerned, he was fighting against the apocalypse for the right to die his own man.

"No, Sam," Dean's blue eyes pierced his. "I know you hate it, but that's why if you take this step, everyone else will follow. It'll be fine."

"Because you're so fine," Sam wanted to retort. His brother was a hodgepodge of spirit and angelic influences and it wasn't always an improvement. Sam sought out Josie's eyes. She merely looked at him as if to say, "Can I get back to my life now?" The sheriff was all brass tacks, and he'd seen her in the company of several spirits as if it was no big deal.

"All right, can I come back with you, Sheriff? Cecil's the only one I trust to find me someone I'm not going to hate leading around."

"Have him find you a babe," Dean said. "Imagine having a hot chick to tuck you in at night. Bet she won't smell of yak."

"Sure thing, Sam, we'd be glad to have you," Josie replied. "Don't worry, old Cecil doesn't have enough of a sense of humor to tease you about it."

Sam spent weeks working on the rollout for their global network. How to vet the spirits, how to bind them properly, how to prevent demons from sneaking in. Their tribal contacts were geniuses in this area, but they also refused to share their practices beyond the experimentation sessions with Sam.

Dean and the Khan showed up pretty frequently because his brother liked practicing his angel apparition skills among the Indians, who weren't fazed by much. Sam had to admit that the tribal elders they dealt with responded well to Dean's plus-one situation, and his brother helped negotiate some terms for loaning out spirits from tribes willing to do so.

"It's time, bro," Dean finally said one day when they were leaving a final meeting with some Choctaws. "The ceremony is ready to start, all you have to do is show up."

"No, please don't ask me to do this," Sam said in a panic, and the next thing he knew he was on the Navajo reservation, surrounded by people in ceremonial garb.

"I told you I would never travel with you like that!" Sam was irate. "Don't just scoop me up without warning!"

"You wouldn't've come otherwise, brother, and look. We arrived in one piece." Dean was gloating over another successful use of his angel skills.

The drums were already going at a low speed but they started to pick up. Sam smelled the sage and other herbs, he heard the chants. It was everything he'd been near for months, but it was directed at him, and he felt like he was going to be sick. Someone offered him a bowl with what he knew to be a mild calmative, but Sam refused it. He wanted to be awake while this alien presence entered him.

Maybe it was Zacariah and all those other angelic pervs who talked so sexually about being ridden, Sam thought slowly as the energy in the circle started to shift. Maybe it was Dean getting off on being Cas' vessel. But somewhere along the line, vessel, possession and a sort of sexual assault got all mixed up in Sam's mind, and he was terrified at being infiltrated by this stranger.

The drums roared in his ears and Sam's vision went black.

_Encrypted email sent to the End the End listserv from Sam Winchester_

October 9

Hello fellow warriors for the Cause,

As you know from our many communications over the past month, we are close to rolling out the second prong of our attack plan, Operation Symbiosis. I am happy to report that my guest is very well-behaved and no trouble at all. In fact, my efforts to learn a second language are going much better, and I'm experiencing a sense of calm that is quite useful during these stressful times.

Most importantly, I performed several diagnostic tests that so far have indicated I am protected against several types of spirit infiltration. It's a good feeling, folks.

So as you make your final preparations for participating in this maneuver, act with confidence, but not over-confidence. Remember: only invite a vetted guest with the help of a vetted practitioner. Anyone who invites the wrong thing in does so at their own risk.

As per Article IV of the Cause's Convention, you will be granted one attempt at exorcism by your fellows unless there are exigent circumstances, but we will NOT be held responsible for your safety in such a case.

In all cases, we urge you to stick to the playbook so we can turn this thing around.

Do it for yourself, do it for the Cause,

Sam Winchester,

Co-Leader

Sam pressed "send" and leaned back in his chair.

"You did good, Sammy. Real good," Dean said from behind him. "You meant what you wrote?"

"I did," Sam said, gazing at the elderly Navajo shaman who was sitting on the floor nearby. "He's exactly like Cecil said, quiet, unobtrusive. And my Navajo is, like, getting better by the minute."

Sam had been trying to learn for a while but only picked up a smattering until now.

Dean put his hand on his brother's shoulder. "You can see I wasn't trying to push a lifestyle choice on you. The whole worrying about Lucifer riding you thing was killing you from the inside, man. How could I not give you a little push to something that will probably save you?"

"We'll see if White Crow has the muscle to keep out my intended," Sam could hardly believe that he was free of that threat, "but at least I feel a little less like everyone in our camp is actually an enemy agent. I mean, we've got our tests now to root out possessed people, but still, we were vulnerable."

"You want to see vulnerable, you wait until Balthazar starts the ball rolling in Heaven," Dean said, and Sam watched his brother's smile of anticipation morph into that haunted look that Dean took great pains to hide most of the time.

"We couldn't have done any of this without Cas," Dean whispered. "He had all the right ideas, right from the beginning." His older brother mastered himself and said in a stronger voice, "I'm glad we're all going to be fighting with him. Up until now, it's just been him fighting alone in Heaven."

"Don't forget Balthazar the master manipulator playing both sides," Sam reminded him. "This is like Christmas! I haven't felt this kind of anticipation since we were kids! Do you think they'll react right away?"

October 14 became known in extraterrestrial circles as the day the bottom dropped out of the international soul market.

On October 10, Balthazar had instructed two long-standing vessel-angel pairs to go ahead and do what they had volunteered to do—consummate their relationship and create two more angels afflicted with "Nephilism" as the symptoms Cas had chosen to display had been called. A very un-angelic refusal to fight, the laughter, the questioning, and this odd thing that, at first, could not yet be called a soul but was still a new appendage he'd never had before, and now was calling into question the universe's assumption that only humans had souls—all these traits had been catalogued in exquisite detail by Heaven's most ruthless anatomists.

All of these qualities had all been a natural part of Cas' increasing humanity, but he did everything he could during his torture and inquisition sessions to reinforce the idea that the process made him weak. And above all, that the whole thing had been involuntary.

It was not only heaven that dealt in souls. Death reaped souls; demons traded them. Souls were the coin of most realms.

If Heaven felt like it could start minting money, essentially, that would give them a tremendous advantage. Assuming, of course, that they could isolate and control the process.

Only Dean, Cas, and the angel that knew them both well, Balthazar, knew that a genuine love and desire to merge was essential to the process—not something that could be forced or controlled at all. The leading angels would not have understood if they'd tried to explain.

But they were luckily very receptive to the lies Balthazar wove.

"We're so pleased with the work you've been doing," Rafael said in one of Heaven's interrogation rooms.

"Not at all," Balthazar said modestly, wondering as he had many times before if Rafael was using the royal "we" these days or speaking for the other ultra-orthodox angels.

"I was skeptical at first, I admit. It seemed a rather unexpected end to Cas' obsession with the man, but you were right—we had to be sure it wasn't the start of something larger. Would you like to—question—this one first? You do have such a talented touch."

"I'd be delighted," Balthazar replied.

"Bring in the prisoner!" Rafael called, and shortly a vulnerable-looking angel with a knob where his soul would soon be was dragged into the room.

"B-balthazar," the offending angel, whose name was Ambriel, babbled with that half-laughter that Cas also displayed.

"That's right. You thought that just because I take some of the mud-monkeys to bed that I have a real sympathy for them?" Balthazar stuck a needle of pure wrath into the angel's side. "What did you do to accomplish this abomination?" He pierced the other angel with enough spikes to make him incoherent.

"What was that? I can't hear you. Funny, Cas was much more expressive when I had him on the rack." The rebellious angel's eyes goggled at the announcement but then he screamed in agony.

"You wanted to be close to the soul, didn't you?" He withdrew his hand from the wheel that was stretching apart the prisoner's wings.

"Yes, yes, I did, I wanted to be close to it!" Ambriel cried with sincerity, just as Balthazar hoped he would.

The interrogator leaned forward. "Did you touch it?"

"Yes, I—" the angel moaned with the entry of an additional spike.

"How many times?"

"Two, maybe, I'm not sure. It wasn't really anything I did, it was just there, all around me suddenly, and—"

"You do know that the human soul is not there for your perverse enjoyment?" Balthazar roared, with his eye on Rafael.

"She said I could," Ambriel whimpered, much to the torturer's dismay, but he recovered quickly.

"What stratagem did you use? The old, 'I'm sick and need energy?' The tried-and-true 'We'll be vanquished by our enemies if you don't put out?" He wedged a tongue of angelic flame in Ambriel's midsection and then withdrew it. He'd discovered the sudden absence of pain cleared the mind, and his prisoner had one more line to deliver.

"I held it in my hand, and when I let go, it stuck to me. I couldn't get it off, it was inside me, and then it was growing and I felt strange, and—you look so ridiculous, both of you, standing there all self-important, like two, two little fringed fops with these big, big shadows trailing around you like these filthy, royal trains. Oh, might I carry your train, Rafael, King of—"

Here Ambriel lapsed into a delirious laughter. Rafael poked him a few times with some sharp instruments. Balthazar made as if he would tighten the rack again.

"Peace, brother and patience," Rafael stayed his hand. "Ah well, we know from experience with Castiel that it will take a while for the creature to recover from its fit," the lead angel said, throwing the torture device aside. "Carry him back to the anatomist to have the growth re-measured!"

Ambriel was removed from the room and then Balthazar said, "Their bodies are dirt. I play in the mud—frequently—" The two angels exchanged a gentleman's look of complicity. "But I come out clean. The beasts are there for our enjoyment, perhaps, but one stops short of fondling the merchandise. A soul's value lies in what we can do with it, not in and of itself. Who couples with a pile of cash, after all?"

"Well said, brother," Rafael said, but his companion could see his mind was elsewhere. "You don't think this is—contagious—do you? I might have grazed the—protuberance—when I was poking him." The angel shuddered. "The Nephilim from ages past, they were the sons, the born sons of human mothers and angelic sires. I have never heard of any condition that would make the sire his own father, so to speak."

"All we can do is act prudently, dear brother," Balthazar said. "We can't have Heaven reduced to a bunch of babbling idiots at a time like this."

Ambriel curled himself up where he'd landed in the cell.

"I hope your torments were not too great," Castiel said, crawling over.

"Balthazar, it's a trick, he tricked me," Ambriel gasped with difficulty.

"No, my brother, but we couldn't tell you he would be interrogating you, or your performance would have been unsatisfactory," Castiel said gently, laying a hand on his companion's head. "And when the other prisoner comes back from testing, you won't tell him either. Remember why you agreed to do this of your own free will."

"Because I loved my vessel, and because I think the administration here is a pack of fools."

They shared a good laugh over that observation.

"This laughter, it makes me forget even our troubles," Ambriel observed. "Is this my—soul?" he asked with reverence.

"Perhaps. There is much to discover."

The third angel, Zophiel, was dumped in the cell and lay there shivering while the other two looked at him with sympathy. The diagnostic procedures were far more invasive and unpleasant than the rack. Angels are less creative than devils but their capacity for abstraction made them just as formidable.

"Zophiel. Zophiel, my brother," Castiel said, turning the angel to meet his gaze. "We know how to be brave during trial and tribulation, so do not lose heart. There is something I have discovered in my time here. Not only can I hear my—mate," Castiel blushed, and the other two angels studied the emotion, "when he talks to me at times, but I believe he can hear me sometimes, too. You have to use a fantasy."

"Fantasy, like a dream? I've never had a dream," Ambriel interjected, perplexed.

"When I think very clearly about my human, from right here," Castiel indicated his growing soul, "I think what we would be doing if we were together."

"Such as?" Zophiel asked earnestly.

Castiel pulled his wings in front of his face. "The rest is up to you. Excuse me while I have a fantasy."

Castiel and Dean were walking. He wasn't sure what they were going to do about the fact that he had no body anymore, with Jimmy released from his role as vessel once the Host came for him. But it didn't matter. They'd find some handsome coma patient and Cas would use him to be with Dean.

It didn't matter, Cas just needed to feel. They were walking in the door from having an evening together, and Cas threw Dean on the bed. No, it would be better if Dean threw him, no—

It always quickly degenerated into a tangle of limbs and mouths and the angel's inability to decide who did what to whom. He wanted all of it. Every inch of Dean gleamed at him with an almost painful concreteness in his mind. His hand in Dean's hair, no, Dean's hand in his hair while he—

"Will a fantasy make the torments less?" Zophiel asked. "I feel uncertain and do not relish the experience."

"Yes, it will," Castiel said, unwillingly letting the images slip away. "That, and picturing Raphael in a party hat. You have a job to do,; you are a soldier of the Lord. And this is His work."

A lackey came to fetch the third prisoner, this time clad in some strange garment. "Come along or I will impale you," said the angel, obviously not wanting to get too close.

"Remember the hat," Cas called after Zophiel.

"How many more of us will there be?" Ambriel asked when he'd gone.

"It looks like the plan is beginning to work, but there are sympathizers in places you would never imagine. As the second phase gets closer I will tell you more, but first you must master all of the changes and new sensations so that they are not used against you. There will be more torture and definitely more tests, so steel your will, brother."

Ambriel was looking at him wonderingly. "How can you have such mastery over yourself? I feel like I've been turned into custard."

Castiel smiled. "It's just as we have noticed in humans many times. Weakness contains much strength, and love is both. Besides, I must send strength to Dean. He has borne his changes bravely."

Here Castiel obscured his face again so he could conjure up Dean. He began with the top of his head, but somehow never managed to get to his toes. "I'll have to remember that idea," he whispered to himself.

Dean and Sam were getting ready to speak before another group of hunters. Since they started building the bunker at Bobby's, the rest of the world was having to come to them. Dean was drinking a protein drink while Sam looked through the agenda, when Dean doubled over.

"What's the matter? Are you sick? Are you hurt?" Sam asked quickly. Usually if he was concerned about something, White Crow would be interested too, but the shaman was looking out the window. He'd been distracted for hours.

"No, I, um, just need a minute." Dean dashed out of the room.

"What's up with him?" Sam asked White Crow, not really expecting an answer.

The Mongolian answered by making a lewd gesture with his lips.

Sam was confused, and his expression must have reflected this, because he was treated to the odd experience of a "birds and the bees" lecture from a spirit, in a mix of Mongolian, broken English, and pantomime.

There were no flies on the ancient Mongolians when it came to sex, Sam learned in the time it took for Dean to reappear.

"Quit inserting yourselves into my fantasy life; it's the only life I've got," Dean snapped when he returned.

When a message occasionally came through Dean's connection with Cas, Sam saw the relief mixed with all the other emotions his brother worked so hard to ignore. After the meeting, Dean went out to talk with the stars, as he put it, but came running back inside quickly.

"Sammy, Bobby, it's started!"

Rufus came in on his heels. "There's a moratorium. It's ground to a halt!"

White Crow exchanged a few words with the Mongolian. They seemed to understand each other.

Bobby was staring over the top of his book. "It's started or it's stopped?"

"The souls! Heaven has put a kibosh on all soul-handling," Dean panted. "They're freaking out. Here, let me put on the radio to my station." He put on the static he knew drove his brother and uncle crazy. "They're not accepting any new souls, which affects the Reapers. All angels but a select few are giving up their vessels for the time being."

"There's a backup on down the line, as far as I have knowledge of," Rufus continued while Dean sat with his ear to the set. "People close to death are wandering around in spirit, but they're not dying. I saw a bottleneck down at the hospital."

Sam got out the booze and poured a glass for all drinkers, with three extra, one for the Khan, one for Rufus, one for White Crow. Bobby was due to receive his spirit any day now, when they had a chance to take a break from their other duties. "We're in it for sure now, " Sam said. "To the Cause."

"Ya think?" Bobby replied, downing his fast. "We've been in it, son." He handed a glass over his shoulder to Dean, who'd switched off the static. "We're all in it together, at any rate."

"You got something on your mind, Bobby?" Dean asked.

"Balthazar has been a real good friend to all of us. If they recall him, we're going to be in trouble, Dean," their uncle said. Sam was the only human who knew the full extent of Dean's angelic transformation. As far as Bobby knew, Dean could understand Angel Radio, and all other weirdness was due to his hosting the Khan, now that that was out of the bag with Operation Symbiosis.

Dean opened his mouth and Bobby stopped him. "And those so-called messages from Cas don't look like they're fit to share with the class."

Dean smiled happily while everyone laughed, and then he said seriously, "Balthazar and I have talked this thing to death. Our contingencies have contingency plans. As soon as they stop the moratorium, which they'll have to do eventually, there will be the next step. Let's drink to one thing working out before we take on the rest of the universe, okay?"

Sam caught his brother's look that said it was good they were keeping Bobby on a need to know. He poured another round. "If you can send a message to him, tell Cas this one's for him," Sam said, holding up his glass. "He's a kickass strategist, no offense, Khan. You're dating a genius, Dean."

"To Cas." "To Cas."

They raised their glasses and Dean closed his eyes as the whiskey burned down his throat. He tried to transmit an image of the scene to his vanished lover. "You are pretty awesome, Cas," was all he could think of to say, feeling shy all of a sudden, and when he opened his eyes, eight eyes were staring at him.

"That was not an X-rated message, and even if it was, it was none of your business!" Dean stormed off, but the mood in the house was upbeat compared to the tense conspiring of the last several months.

"Even if they smite the hell out of us for this, we'll go down like men," Sam said later on to White Crow.

"That's something," the shaman said.


	14. Chapter 14

The Demon Crowley stuck his head in the private room at Carmine's in New York City. "How gangster of you, Balthazar. I assume this was your choice of venue. Remy here always chooses a barren steppe somewhere and I come away with sand in my teeth."

Remiel, the appointed Celestial Liason to the Nether Realms for the last millennium, merely gestured to the empty chair. Balthazar was sure the other angel got and kept the post because he was completely without imagination—the perfect clerk to transmit intelligence without trying to benefit for himself.

The waitress appeared and poured three glasses of wine. Balthazar got up to whisper in her ear and the door was closed, whereupon the angel threw up a privacy sigil.

He sat down and everyone stared at each other.

Remiel pulled out a flask and ceremoniously offered it to Crowley, who demurred and also pulled out a flask. They each took one of the clean glasses from the sideboard and filled it with their choice of liquor.

Balthazar grinned at the show of mistrust and drank from the glass in front of him. He'd chosen the wine himself, so there was no risk of Hell-sponsored poison, but he was aware the show of daring only helped his position.

"So, are you here to apply for a job?" Crowley asked. "Your betrayal of your best comrade-in-arms was epic. I do hope you kissed Cas on the cheek before you turned him over to the interrogator, who I hear was quite thorough." The demon enjoyed the surprise of his two hosts. "Yes, I hear things."

Balthazar shrugged. "I always say that the reprobate makes the most trustworthy collaborator—he can be trusted to always act on his own best interests."

"Thank you for meeting with us," interjected Remiel.

"I came because I was curious. This can't have anything to do with Dean Winchester?" the demon mused. "When we last met I agreed to the terms of your proposal with great sadness because it had to be done." He leaned towards Balthazar. "I was very sad to see Dean banned from my premises. He was a delight. Begged so prettily—and specifically. I agreed to your request to shut him out because we can't have personal guardian angels messing about with Fate. Dean Winchester was mine once and he should have been mine again. That extra Deadly alone should have delivered that delightful ass to me on a platter."

"His ass was an interest of mine, as well, but sadly it seems it will not be," Balthazar interjected before Remiel could start his diplomatic blather. "Oh yes, I tried to jump on that the minute Cas was gone, but Dean simply won't be wooed."

"What do you think of his new look?" Crowley asked. "I liked the all-American apple-pie-with-a-shot-of-whiskey thing he had before. Wholesome is so tasty."

"Oh no, you haven't seen him like I have since he's been training to follow his resurrected Messiah, that gamey little Mongolian he's called up. Yes, I normally find them quite tiresome when they're all hopped up on an earnest little cause, but the combination of this lean body rippling with musculature and the gamine look from those cheekbones—with that childlike hope he has these days, he's eminently do-able."

"He showed you?" Crowley was all ears.

"I professed an avuncular interest in him that sadly has not panned out. And yes, he is quite sculptural. A pity."

"Mmmm!" Crowley made a musing noise. "They should always send you. You're fun."

"Ahem!" Remiel attempted to take the lead. "We did, indeed, wish to discuss the current situation, with hopes that we could clarify our mutual positions."

"Oh, blah-blah Remy. Why didn't they send you on your own like they usually do?" the demon asked curiously.

"Balthazar is here as an observer," Remiel answered stiffly, his displeasure evident.

"So this is quality control—the least scrupulous angel around observing you? I'm intrigued." The demon took a sip of liquor and then leaned back to look over his tented fingers. "Is there dissension in the ranks that I don't know about? Do tell."

Remiel shot Balthazar a look he took to mean—"They don't know anything about it," and then directed himself to the demon with more confidence. "It's nothing, we just wished to ascertain that your side was not going to break our long-standing détente and take advantage of the momentary delay to pocket a few of the souls waiting to be sorted."

"It would never occur to me," the demon said. "Our realms have enjoyed a mutually profitable relationship for so long, and this whole apocalypse thing is really a pissing contest between the respective upper managements. Once everyone finds a way to save face, they'll back down."

"Managerial decisions are beyond my ken," Remiel answered. "But I'm glad you agree that a glitch anywhere in the supply chain would serve no one's interests—certainly not yours or mine." He took a sip from his glass.

"No it wouldn't," Crowley said thoughtfully. "Unless it would. You're not playing the market, are you fellows?"

The two angels looked blank.

"Of course you're not, that would be something I would do," the demon chuckled and refilled his glass. "If I had suddenly won in a card game, say, I wouldn't go flaunting my winnings around town. I might even cry poor-mouth, so no one asked me to share."

The two angels looked even blanker.

"No that's not at all likely," the demon Crowley leaned back. "That would mean your Department for Soul-Engineering would have actually discovered something for the first time in millennia. These academics can't keep anything to themselves. They would have published some erudite little paper and sent it to our department to gloat."

"What department?" Balthazar asked, intrigued. "You mean there's a sort of intellectual correspondence between our realms?"

"Yes, it's considered good form to keep abreast of each other's achievements," Remiel said, which Balthazar took to mean that it was a typical diplomatic exercise of incremental one-up-manship.

"But I didn't even believe in that sort of alchemy turn-dross-into-gold malarkey when I was alive and made my living from it," Crowley said. "My barmy Uncle Nigel did, but that goes to show how likely that kind of investigation is to pan out. I haven't been down to that department in years."

Balthazar reached for Remiel's untouched glass of wine. "Do you mind? This is a fascinating insight into the more arcane workings of our respective realms, Crowley, but I'm not sure you've established that you aren't benefitting in some way from the shutdown."

The demon laughed. "A straight shooter. How refreshing. We don't establish things like that from these little meetings, friend. We're here to sniff each other's arses and posture a little bit and then go back and dictate a memo." He directed himself to Remiel. "A little rough around the edges, but he could be a pretender for your job, make no mistake."

Remiel rose. "I believe we've gleaned all that we are going to from our distinguished guest."

"As have I, thank you so much for the little chat," Crowley said. "And so nice to see you, Balthazar. We should do it again sometime. Glad that that little thing is forgotten," he whispered confidentially.

"Oh, I hadn't even thought. And the pleasure was all mine," Balthazar replied. He pressed some bills in the waitress' hand and whispered to her. "Maybe I'll see you later?"

Then the two angels were back in Heaven.

"What was that all about? You didn't even ask proper questions! I thought I was fluent in bullshit, but that was circumlocution that went nowhere," Balthazar said from the antechamber to the administrative section.

"It's called diplomacy. You might have heard of it," Remiel answered testily. "And if you had been paying attention instead of waxing eloquent about a human's physicality, you would have gathered quite a bit of information." He stalked into the room where Raphael was waiting for their report.

"I didn't say I didn't learn anything, brother," Balthazar said, entering just behind.

"What news is this?" Raphael asked. "Is this condition some kind of contagion they have afflicted upon us?"

"Crowley thought the idea absurd," Remiel said.

"No, he said he never went down to that department, is what I got out of it," the other angel corrected. "For all he knows, such a contagion has been manufactured."

"Is this true?" Raphael asked the diplomat.

"Yes, I suppose he technically said that. But if Hell was able to create this plague, it would hardly leave a method for creating new souls in our laps, for us to reap the profits."

"I agree, it doesn't make sense," Balthazar conceded. "But Crowley walked away intrigued. I wouldn't be surprised if that dusty little department didn't get a new influx of resources."

"You mean, you laid the groundwork for an arms race," Raphael said. "Hardly a good idea given the approaching apocalypse."

"I don't for a minute think this is a demon-inspired contagion," Balthazar said, though he had already planted the seeds for that worry some time back. "But an arms race where Hell spends precious resources trying to keep up with a technology we may never learn to master, doesn't sound like a net loss on our part. And Crowley did spend some moments musing about whether we had such a technology, and were playing the market to maximize our net gain in souls. Not exactly a bad impression to leave him with, either way. "

"I like this. Well done, Balthazar," Rafael said,

"Our brother is perhaps a bit too abrupt to succeed in diplomatic circles," Remiel observed.

"Then you must school him. Continue acting as an observer, Balthazar. I love hearing new ideas, after all."

Remiel and Balthazar burst into laughter when their audience was over. "Do you think he really believes that?" the diplomat asked in a surprising moment of candor.

"I think he does, brother. I'm sorry if I shamed you back there on earth. My nature is more impatient than yours, I fear."

"Not at all, brother. I do believe you relaxed the demon a little, with all your filthy talk. Ordinarily we spend most of the time staring at each other. Perhaps there is a place for you in diplomacy after all." They walked down the passageways that were blessedly free of screams at the moment. "What did the little vermin mean, anyway, about some thing being forgotten?"

"When he first acceded to a position of some repute in Hell, our interests collided once. It doesn't do to take these things personally. I gave up any investment in my missions long ago, as, I'm sure, did you."

"Indeed," Remiel answered. "It's been a pleasure, brother. Until the next time."

Balthazar returned to earth in time to meet the waitress from Carmine's as she got off work.

"Are you mob? Because I get a vibe from you, but nobody's ever seen you around before," Gabrielle said as he lit her cigarette. She had changed into a black miniskirt, tights and calf-length boots, and let her hair loose so that the full curls framed her head. The white spotted silk scarf she had knotted around her neck set off her cinnamon-colored skin. Her jacket had a fringe that swung when she walked. She did look his type: beautiful, cosmopolitan and undemanding.

"No, but if I told you what I did for a living, you'd get a knock on the door all the same, so let's leave it at that," he said. "Where are we going?"

"Well, that depends. I like a guy who knows his wine—usually he knows a thing or two about other subjects," she said, heading them towards the east side.

"Are we talking fine literature, French film from the Truffaut period, or certain other refinements?" he asked, putting his arm around her slim waist. She was perhaps an inch taller than him, and he felt the faraway awareness that various men were directing jealous looks at him.

"You're not as smooth as you make yourself out to be," Gabrielle said suddenly as they sat cross-legged on her studio floor, drinking the wine he'd selected on their way in.

"Whatever do you mean?" Balthazar replied as he watched the wine do its golden work on his hostess. He liked to watch someone like her, who looked like a column sculpted out of a single block of dark marble, melt a little thanks to the grace of chemistry.

"You're not so bad," she laughed, running her fingers through his hair.

"Perhaps not," Balthazar murmured into her neck. "Soon, perhaps not."

And he let her carry him to a place where he wasn't the creature who found it frighteningly easy to pierce his best friend with spikes, not just because his friend had asked him to. But because Balthazar had been nursing this grudge so long he would have to pry off the whelp's teeth from his bloody dugs if he were ever to be free of it.

When it was over, Gabrielle slept, and he watched her. This was the moment he loved. When his consciousness, that was never granted any respite, could let another's rest. Balthazar couldn't stop himself from thinking back to Paris in 1880.

He was stationed in Paris for some reason he couldn't even remember now. Some complot to be foiled, blah blah. He and two other angels were sent to frequent a certain salon district so see if the bored intellectuals hadn't called up something rather nasty in one of their table-turning sessions that were more properly an excuse to cop a feel on the equally forbidden ankles of the gentlewomen and gentlemen at the table.

It was an odd time to be on earth. Balthazar remembered his two angelic companions telling him he should look for another vessel, because the one he'd been most immediately compatible with was so dark as to be problematic. Etienne Robert Valery-Vasquez was a 24-year-old student at the Sorbonne and had enough gypsy and Spanish blood for his curly jet-black hair and tan complexion to be met with suspicion by some of the more retrograde Parisians.

Balthazar refused to change vessels, however, because he felt he should know what kind of ridiculousness Europe was gripped with at the time: after centuries of colonialism, they were caught in a desperate love-hate affair with everything dark, native and primal, which they thought to be equivalent to the persons and bodies of conquered peoples.

This ethnic purity obsession was absurd, but it made Balthazar more attuned to his vessel's experience than he would have been. They began talking about the occasional instances of prejudice, him and Etienne. It was nothing so showy as Castiel's affair with Dean, which had every tongue in the universe wagging long before they'd consummated their affections. But Balthazar had let down his guard. He got attached to the man, and, worse, let the man get attached to him. By letting the boundaries slip just a little between the inhabiter and his habitat, the angel found himself giving the man glimpses of the huge universe that lay beyond his human sight. In return, Etienne was very intelligent, and, when not gripped by shyness, prone to an acerbic wit that Balthazar hoped to let loose in the salons again one day, more confident than before and ready to start his own magazine.

Summer afternoons on the Seine. Evenings with sharp-tongued intellectuals and velvet-voiced cabaret singers. It was a grand time to be alive, and together, Etienne and Balthazar discovered this in a way they could not have on their own.

Companionship. Not brotherhood in the angelic trenches. But feeling warmed by someone's closeness. Neither creature ever thought it could happen to them.

Balthazar drew it out as long as possible, but finally he had no excuse to stay any longer. He bid Etienne goodbye, and he even erased the memory of their time together when the man got so upset at their parting.

But something had reached the quiet, unassuming student in a place where it shouldn't have. Balthazar was at first perplexed and then horrified to see the depth of the human emotional range playing out in his former vessel. Etienne fell prey to one of the spiritualists in vogue in Paris at the time, one of the very people Balthazar had investigated using Etienne's body and dismissed as a charlatan.

The occultist in question wasn't Crowley, though they had been of similar philosophies, but the woman was very much like the demon Crowley when he was alive: preying upon the innocent by using the cheap spirits willing to show up to his ignorant mixture of arcane traditions. Balthazar had watched his former vessel chase after any explanation the woman would give him for this yearning for the beyond that was consuming him. As often happened, Etienne ended up calling up a demon instead of the god he wished to ask why he missed some unidentifiable thing from beyond the sky. He went mad from courting repeated demonic possessions, all under the encouragement of the spiritualist, who dropped him once he was attacking men on the street because he imagined them to be inhabited by an angel.

Balthazar had been completely inadequate to the situation, and there was no one to ask, of course. Castiel was very different then—a trusted friend, but with nothing to add on this unexpected side effect from using a vessel for a time, as they had for centuries.

"I know you did no wrong, brother, but perhaps there is something in the envesseling process that needs to be examined. You should tell the authorities," Castiel had counseled him.

And Balthazar did. He applied to every office he knew of, asking for permission to intervene and try to right whatever wrong he had done to the man whose only sin was saying yes to being his vessel.

Balthazar's petition was not even reviewed until Etienne hanged himself. And when his soul came up for review, they took one look at all the smudges from the demons, the harm he had done to himself and other people, and this quiet, luminous soul had been driven down into the depths.

The angel discovered that there was something worse than watching someone he cared about go to pieces because he committed the sin of caring. Every moment Etienne was in Hell, Balthazar was drying out until he was a husk that somehow hopped to attention when his angelic supervisors gave orders.

It took ages, but finally his request for another review was granted, and the administrators found some bureaucratic term equivalent to "collateral damage" that found reason to pardon Etienne. Balthazar was disappointed that they hadn't found him at fault, that no one was at fault, but he raced down to Hell to rescue the man's soul.

"There's no one by that name here," a lackey-demon told him, and Balthazar was put through an agonizing runaround until finally the demon Crowley showed up.

The angel already detested the creature for being of the same cloth as the spiritualist that led Etienne astray, but forced himself to be polite. "I am here for the soul of Etienne Robert Valery-Vasquez. One of our administrative mistakes."

"Oh, too bad," Crowley had said in that monstrously friendly way he had. "He was a true pleasure while he was here, but you're a bit too late."

"What do you mean, too late? You didn't send him to Purgatory, did you? Their record-keeping is terrible over there; it may be impossible to locate him."

"Never fear, never fear," Crowley said. "I can save you the trip." And he led Balthazar to Limbo, which appeared like a cloud of swirling dust before his eyes. "Here he is."

"I don't understand," Balthazar had said, though everyone knew about these souls that had been tormented until they felt no more, and fell apart into dust. He reached his hands out to stupidly grab at the dust, as if he could pick out what had been Etienne and put him back together again.

"It was very simple, and yet very intricate," the demon said, and proceeded to narrate all the torments he had put Etienne through until he dissolved. "One of my first works of art from when I ascended to the position. I was very sad to see him go. An acquaintance of yours?"

"No, just a case, but I'm going to get a few lashes for not coming back with the goods," Balthazar forced himself to banter with the repugnant demon.

"I sympathize," Crowley had said. "The working grunts like us always have to pay for the mistakes of others. Someone went over this soul with a piece of barbed wire before it came to me, by the way. It wouldn't have lasted long under the best of circumstances. Do you need to say any words or anything before we go?"

"Oh yes, thank you, might I have a moment?"

"Of course," Crowley had said before graciously ceding Limbo to the angel.

Balthazar gathered some dust in his hand. "I'm sorry, compagnon," he whispered, and then said in a clear voice the Enochian phrase with which one swears vengeance.

"Thanks for that," Balthazar said with the ease that had become habitual to him since everything lost its meaning. "I would have had to make another trip, and I hate cleaning up after other people's messes. In the end, we should each be held accountable for our own actions, don't you think?"

"That's our philosophy here precisely," Crowley had said.

"Until we meet again," Balthazar had said.

He'd been planning his revenge ever since, but not until Castiel had the stupidly public affair with the Winchester man did Balthazar finally find his opportunity. Yes, he was helping his only true friend, and that friend's lover, yes he might possibly overthrow the stupid regime that believed in using people as vessels and then throwing them away. Yes, he most certainly would make that toad Crowley wish he'd never been shat out by the universe.

Balthazar thought fondly of the pile of dust he had hidden in a secret place in the gardens of heaven. He had been too stupid to know how to do what Castiel had done with his human. If he'd known how to fuse a piece of Etienne into himself, he liked to think he would have been brave enough to do so.

Gabrielle stirred in her sleep and threw her arm around him while murmuring something warm and trusting.

"Don't worry," the angel whispered. "The Demon Crowley isn't half as smart as he thinks he is." Balthazar's calculated little faux pas in which he asked the demon whether he was profiting from the shutdown made it seem as though Heaven suspected Hell of something.

The angel picked up the woman's phone where she had left it on the bedside table. He texted a series of letters to a number and then set the phone back down with a grin.

Sam Winchester heard his message tone and jumped out of bed. In a moment, text messages were on their way across the globe, and then he sent a message to the listserv.

Six hours later, thousands of people already had their new spirits installed.

Twelve hours later, thousands more had invited their spirits in, and the first of a wave of demon-conjuring rituals began.

Twenty-four hours later, the Demon Crowley was feeling a little limp. Balthazar knew because just as Heaven was beginning to lift its embargo on souls, Crowley sent a terse message withdrawing diplomatic relations.

"If you little cocksuckers think you're going to shut us out of the game by this frankly inelegant maneuver putting the humans in between, you've got another think coming," was what the message said.

The four partners met in Cas' room soon after.

"They let you keep your vessel," Sam observed. "We were afraid you wouldn't be able to come."

"I'm considered beyond reproach," Balthazar said in a dark tone. "All in all, I think we can congratulate ourselves on a job well done. Hell suspects Heaven, and Heaven would be only too glad to find a scapegoat in Hell."

"The demons aren't taking the latest maneuver lying down," Josie pointed out. "I hear they're stockpiling some people in case they can't get other meatsuits."

The humans exchanged a pained look. They knew there would be retaliations, but this was the first time it really felt like war wasn't going to be a clean victory. Each of them had their own spirit—they were safe, but others who had yet to be reached by the Cause network they weren't so lucky.

"The only thing we could do would be to force-possess civilians, and that's not what we're about," Dean said.

"It's time for phase three," Josie announced. "We need mass action, and we need to move the battlefield away from populated areas as much as possible."

"I don't know," Sam said. "Number one, I don't think it's good for both me and Dean to disappear right now, because it will make our supporters and our enemies think things aren't going well. When the opposite is true. And number two, I actually don't understand phase three, no matter how many times you explain it to me."

"The ancient Hebrews frequently had these so-called 'God contests,'" Balthazar interjected.

"And the whole point is, it's the gods having the contest, not people," Josie said.

Sam looked beseechingly at his brother. "Why does that not completely reassure me?"

"It's going to be awesome, Sammy. I can't stop thinking of Rafael totally thrown off his stride." Anything that hit Heaven where it hurt was one step closer to Cas, as far as he was concerned.

"You coming now, or do you need to send a message to your uncle?" Josie asked. "I don't want any cell messages or angel transmissions while you're on our land."

"I'd be happy to set things in motion," Balthazar said. He answered the question in Dean's eyes. "Everything will be fine while you're gone. You can just concentrate on your mission."

Dean and Balthazar made some sort of silent communication and Sam turned to White Crow.

"In how many scenarios is there a happy ending to this story?"

"About fifty percent," the shaman said.


	15. Chapter 15

After a week and many retellings of the myth, Sam was almost getting used to the idea that he was going to be, for a time. Child of the Water.

From the moment they set foot on Navajo land, they were no longer Sam and Dean Winchester. Dean was called Monster Slayer, or Came Down on a Sunbeam, the older brother in the Navajo myths about the twins who defeated the monsters. Sam was called Child of the Water. There had been some argument about sending off the older brother in real life to act out the adventures of the older brother in the myth, who sometimes acted alone, because Sam's far better grasp of the language, and the fact that his spirit guide was of the tribe, might prepare him better for the road ahead.

In the end, it was decided that the impulsiveness shown by the older brother in the stories matched Dean's personality too well to reverse what had been their natural birth order anyway. Josie clued them in on the background as they approached an impatient Cecil.

"From now on, you are Naayééʼ Neizghání or Bil Najno'ltliji," the medicine man said to Dean. "And you are Naʼídígishí, or Tóbájíshchín," he said to Sam. "Nothing else. Understood?"

The younger Winchester understood the man's words in Navajo very well, and Dean was using his angelic ability to grasp the sense of language by bypassing the words, but neither of them was very good at pronouncing the long, unfamiliar inflections of the language. "Can't we make up nicknames?" Dean protested. "We're going to battle here, I can't very well be tripping over Sam's" The shaman glared "His name when I yell, 'Hey, look out, so-and-so, Big Giant approaching at 10 o'clock."

Cecil launched into a speech about authenticity, but White Crow intervened. "He says 'Big Brother' and 'Little Brother' will do fine," Sam said.

The medicine man showed all signs that he was not going to enjoy sharing authority on tribal legends. "And does your spirit guide want to thrown in his two cents as well?" he asked Dean.

"I don't even know where the Khan is. He gets antsy, anyway, so I'm sure he'll show up when the fighting starts."

"Big Brother, Little Brother, I'll leave you to it," the sheriff said, hiding her smile. "You eat whatever they put in front of you," she admonished Dean.

Other than being forced to choke down a mouthful of solid food here and there as part of the rituals designed to get the brothers into their roles as the brothers of myth, Dean slipped into the stories he'd been reading for months quite comfortably. He was raring to go, ready to meet the Sun, and ganking a few monsters along the way was a return to their usual skill set, as far as he was concerned.

"From what I hear, White Crow is pleased with how well you've taken on your character," Dean said to his younger brother after a grueling day of myths, deciphering Navajo, and strange foods with a side of chanting.

"For the last time, I'm not pretending to be Child-of-the-Water's personality, all concerned for home and hearth, I really am freaking concerned!" Sam didn't like how the lines between himself and his new alter ego had so quickly become blurred—after only a short time he was having a hard time knowing which reactions were his and which belonged to the more conservative younger Twin.

"I can't wait to shoot a few magic arrows," Dean continued obliviously. The Khan had been a master marksman with an arrow while alive, and so together with the veteran hunter accustomed to guns, they were wowing their Navajo hosts with feats of skill with the bow. "We have no idea what kind of repercussions this is going to have on our plane, but it's kind of a neat surprise, knowing we're going to gank somebody without being sure what. At the end of the day, we may have the hides of Lucifer, Crowley, who knows?"

"Your older brother is impetuous. Leave him be," White Crow said as they watched the Khan jump into Dean's body for another round of target practice. "You have the magic stick that will glow if he is hurt, so do not burden him with your concerns about the stories in which he comes home sick or injured, or the two of you are separated when he goes to another realm. They are all true. It has already happened in each of these ways."

"We don't know what the hell we're doing, though, and this crash course can't possibly teach us how to act properly as these heroes," Sam said, practicing some of the marks he was to make with the blood of creatures they were to slay.

"You are not so strong as to be able to break a myth," White Crow scoffed. "As long as you hold tight to the talisman made of Monster Eagle feathers, which is the key to making it through the trials and being accepted by the Sun your Father, you don't have to be particularly intelligent to succeed."

"Except these aren't eagle feathers, so do you think we should be concerned about this Sun-god noticing that?"

"Then your people shouldn't have killed so many eagles," the shaman said. "Myth is like water. You try to hold it in your hand, you will fail and go thirsty. Let it flow through your mouth to your belly, instead, and you will be satisfied. And quieter."

Sam was beginning to miss the days when his inhabiting spirit didn't say anything.

He followed the sign from Dean that it was time for their appointment with Miss Harriet.

This was where their real work took place. Sometimes the old woman felt well enough to be wheeled to a circle of interested community members who heard her breathe new life into the stories she never told the same way twice. Other times, like this evening, she preferred to stay in bed and speak to a private audience of only Sam and Dean, their spirits, Cecil, who acted as scribe, and Darla, her caregiver, who acted as peanut gallery.

"Have you traveled on any rainbows today?" Miss Harriet asked Dean. She had no problem with the fact that he was technically on two levels of her stories, one of which was the Holy People who traveled on sunbeams or rainbows, roughly equivalent to the angels in western myth. She drew a connection between the Older Twin's second name, 'came down on a sunbeam' and left it at that. Sam studied these lines the old woman drew in her spur-of-the-moment retellings, and was gathering that if you could make a case for something that satisfied yourself, the line drawn in the air became an actual plank to another section of the myth.

"I bet he has," Darla was muttering. Dean had had to be completely honest about his agenda to rescue Cas as part of this operation, and the girl loved teasing the badass with the bow-and-arrow about his boyfriend.

"Later," Dean mouthed in front of the blind storyteller to Darla with a grimace. At least Sam had a rollicking argument to look forward to.

Then they turned their minds to their work. On this night, Miss Harriet had the two brothers traveling together; sometimes Dean did half the fighting on his own. She had begun to fly through the killing of the monsters section of the story. The technical elements of this were Cecil's domain, and he had them rehearsing details like the chants needed to respond to Spider Woman until they wanted to scream.

Every night, Miss Harriet was tracing fragile new lines that, by the time the next session rolled around, had hardened into planks that advanced the story in new directions. She was trying to create a structure whereby they could rescue Cas and the other Nephilim.

"The Holy People helped the First Man and the First Woman create Changing Woman, the mother of you boys," Miss Harriet said, placing the angels as part of the creation of humans, a much more active role than they played in the Western myth. "And your father, the Sun, came to her all dressed in white and riding on a white horse."

"So the angels, I mean, the Holy People, they're not even the same kind of thing as the Sun," Sam cut in, ignoring the look from Darla. "Take it up with him," he mouthed to her, gesturing to White Crow, who was nodding at Sam's increasingly frequent attempts to draw parallels between their two traditions.

"The Holy People worked with the First Man and Woman to create the Sun," Miss Harriet replied.

"Which would make Changing Woman, our mom, and the Sun, like on the same level," Sam pursued.

"Yes, I suppose you're right," Miss Harriet reflected. "I never thought of it that way. But the Great Coyote was the Holy Person mainly involved with the creation of the Sun, as well, along with Fire God and a few others."

"Could Changing Woman, say, kick the sun's ass?" Dean asked.

"Duh, the monsters are all in the way," Darla said. "Created by freaky sexual practices," she reminded them, studiously not looking at Dean.

The two brothers sent her a lethal glare as one being.

"What if we went over the Sun's head to these Holy People so they'll make the Sun listen to us?" Sam asked. To his eyes, their main job was to get the Sun to recognize them as his children, and then the Sun himself would slay at least one of the monsters—which Sam took to mean Lucifer on down the line, because the Sun was the father of the biggest monster and thus had to slay him himself. He thought this was a pretty good fit with the fallen angel of light that was Lucifer.

"I don't like anything that puts the Angels in complete control of things," Dean was shaking his head. "I say the Sun is Rafael, and we're going to have to parlay with the bastard in order to bust Cas out."

"The Sun will never be satisfied until he has come to terms with your mother, Changing Woman, and met the terms she has set for the house he makes for her, floating on shimmering water in the West," Miss Harriet continued.

"Would that be, like, the Western Hemisphere?" Sam mused.

"Ugh! We've already decided that your boyfriend-thing is acting like the Wind, because he's whispering advice in your ear," Darla said to Dean. "At least, that's what you say it is. And the Wind is like, the most powerful thing around, just about. The Wind was in the First World, and it created the First Man and First Woman. You see," she appealed to Cecil, "this is why white people can't do this kind of stuff right. You're too literal."

"This means that the Wind, when he gives advice, is also one of the original creators of the world. He can redo creation, in other words, when he tells you what to do," Cecil said, taking pity on them. "Capeesh?"

"It's not about bending the story to our purposes, I think Cecil meant," Dean said later over the beer he'd smuggled in to take the edge off their exhausting mythology lessons. "We're not moving laterally on a plane, we're moving chess pieces in three-maybe more-dimensions, shaping the whole terrain, because—"

"Everything, like Cas our personal Wind-god, goes back to the beginning of time," Sam finished. "I took physics in college, Big Brother, and got an A, and this makes my brain hurt."

"Amen to that, Child-of-the-Waters." They clinked bottles. "I can't wait to get to the ganking part. Khan is fed up with these lessons. I think he's out hunting spirit-buffalo as we speak."

"And I think White Crow is talking shit about me to Darla. Do you think she's right, and we're not cut out for this?"

"The community overruled the couple of people who said that, and the community carries the vote around here," Dean reminded him. "I think the fact that we've been stupid enough to go around slaying monsters all this time, and volunteer to do something even more colossally stupid pretty much sealed the deal."

He stretched out on the futon. "I'm telling you Sam, we've been doing improv our whole lives, showing up and acting like FBI agents or whatever, and what have we found—that it doesn't matter if we really carry a legit badge, if we act like it, we do the job. And not just their job, our job, because we're the ones who show up and have the experience to face what really needs facing."

"Am I becoming less courageous because Younger Brother is less of a badass? Because these are gods we're talking about. Not snot-nosed angels. Things that created the elements, and shit."

"No, Younger Brother, I think I'm manufacturing enough hope for the both of us because I have to. Big Brother is even more of a look before you leap kind of guy than I am."

A knock came at the door of the trailer the tribe had designated as theirs. "Hey Sheriff, come on in," Sam said.

"Would you like one?" Dean asked, noting Josie's unusually worn appearance.

"Sure," she said in English, breaking the custom of people only speaking Navajo to them, and her usual refusal of alcohol. "Still tough going for Naayééʼ Neizghání and Naʼídígishí, I hear," she said after a swig.

"You can say that again, because we can't," Sam said miserably. "Are people like, laughing at us? White Crow won't say either way."

"No, they're not laughing. We're trying to do something we've not really done, which is cram our entire culture into two strangers' heads in a limited period of time. And because we're in the line of fire just like white folks with the apocalypse, we have every reason to make this work. Cecil's racking his brains trying to figure out new ways to explain stuff right now."

"I can tell he's trying to be a sport," Sam acknowledged. "It nearly killed him to say something in a way that made sense to us earlier, and we're still chewing on it."

"I was just saying to S- Younger Brother here that there's no reason to go into this thinking we're ever going to understand your entire mythology. And if this spirit investiture thing works, we don't have to worry. We will really be the Monster Slayer Twins, and we'll improv the hell out of it. That's one thing we're not learning disabled about."

"Were you always smart and I just missed it up till now?" Josie asked, staring at Dean openmouthed.

"Um?" Dean replied uncertainly. Sam shrugged.

"Meet me down at the community center in an hour. No more beer. Bring every bit of ceremonial stuff you've collected over the last few days."

"Do we need weapons?" Dean called after the sheriff.

"If your head's not sharp, an arrow's not going to do you a bit of good," she called over her shoulder.

"Josie was the one I thought I could count on not to talk like Yoda," Dean complained, pouring out the beers.

"If they want to do some late-night chanting or something I could dig that right now," Sam said, washing his face at the sink. "One of Cecil's pop quizzes, not so much."

The two brothers spent the next few minutes handling the ceremonial gear, some of it intimidatingly old, some made out of fabric and plastic beads that happened to be handy, but were in the right colors for the task. They had been told to touch or use everything as frequently as possible so that they got used to the ritual items and vice versa.

"All right, let's head on over and hope there's no food involved," Dean said, not looking forward to being forced to eat meat and have it lay in his stomach that late.

They opened the door to the community center, which was a big empty auditorium, basketball court, and occasional ritual space.

A random selection of the Navajo community was present, ranging from very young to very old, all in an assortment of ritual vestments, many holding props. Miss Harriet was in the center in her wheelchair, looking unusually vibrant. "Hello, Naayééʼ Neizghání and Naʼídígishí!" she called, and the rest of the people gathered echoed the greeting. This much was not unusual.

Josie gave a nod and two men stepped forward. "I am Talking God," said one. "I am Water Sprinkler," said another. "What will we ask of you?"

Together, Dean and Sam crouched in a ready position as if to run a race, and the four men began running laps around the auditorium. The two brothers exchanged a look and hung back a little, making sure not to get winded too fast and let the two spirits come from behind and win, as the myth had them doing several times before the twins learned their lesson.

Just as the two men began to tire, the much better trained brothers sprinted to where the sheriff waved a flag over them. "Congratulations, boys, you just created a new living version of a myth."

From that moment onwards, different people from the audience stepped forward and used their innate knowledge of the creation stories to act them out with Sam and Dean, often calling over each other, overwhelming them with input and brandishing articles that could mean help or harm, depending on which version of this almost infinitely elastic myth they were in. Josie kept the different people coming as if to not let the brothers use their rational minds, which obviously sucked at myth-making, but instead engage their battle-minds.

The two brothers tossed each other sacred hoops and split up to confuse the Big Giant. They saw First Man and First Woman weaving in and out of the action regardless of where they were in the timeline, and learned to shut up when any of the Holy People made an appearance.

When the Wind appeared, Dean broke with the plot that would have the Wind help him withstand the Sun's trials. "Wind, my cousin," he said in what he was later told was Navajo, but he didn't pay attention at the time. "You are one of the Holy Ones from the First World—"

"And you led the Air-Spirit peoples out of the world when it became uninhabitable," Sam chimed in.

"Lead us to a world where all can live without conflict," they said together with what they later agreed was a distinct chill. They'd started saying and doing things in unison a lot.

There was a silence, and then applause from the people, who came up to congratulate the two brothers for their first successful incarnation of their patron Monster Slayers, who were facing modern-day problems now, not the problems of old, by using old threads to weave a new way.

"Well done. You boys are used to learning when somebody's got a knife to your throat. No way you were going to be at your best without using your knowledge," Josie shook their hands.

Darla had been one of the people ready to whip the twins with switches if they didn't win the race, as one version of the story goes, and she seemed put out that she didn't get a chance to use the twig in her hand. "It only took you like, forever and a kindergarten school play to stop thinking all linear and stuff," she said sulkily. "Can I go now?"

"It just goes to show what teaching somebody in the best way for their learning style will do for someone," the sheriff shot back at the girl. "Maybe if your school had known what to do with your dyslexia, you wouldn't've dropped out. I'll see your aunt home, now beat it."

The boys only had a moment to be surprised at the even-tempered Josie's tone. "No more time to celebrate, boys, this was going to be your last lesson regardless. It's been nice having you." She pushed them out of the hall and into a dark corner outside. "There's been some developments while you've been here."

Dean saw the worry that the woman had been wearing when she came to their trailer earlier that evening, most likely to discuss bad news, before she was sidetracked. His heart sank. "Is it Cas? Bobby?"

"Bobby's holding down the fort but he needs you fellas back in the roost," the sheriff replied. Dean looked stricken at the omission of Cas. "I don't know what's going on in Heaven. None of us do. Communication lines are severed unless you can pick up something, Naayééʼ Neizghání, but I'd rather you wait until you're clear of our space before you try tuning in."

"No news doesn't mean the worst news, Naayééʼ Neizghání," Sam gripped his brother's arm and then they both started at the difficult name rolling off his tongue.

"Balthazar and I have some plans in place for this sort of thing," Dean said after a deep breath. "Let's gather up our stuff and our spirit riders." Sam opened his mouth. "Now I'm the older brother twice over, Naʼídígishí, so you're twice overruled. I'm beaming us up, I don't care what kind of excuse we have to make to Bobby."

"That's another thing," Josie laid her hand on Dean's arm as they walked to the trailer. "Bobby's put two and at least one together, and is working on the other one. There's been people going through changes like yours knocking on his door, saying that Balthazar gave them his address in case things went south."

"Has he told anybody?" Dean asked in a panic. The last thing they needed was their top-secret surprise weapon to get out.

"No, I told him that he had to keep quiet and guard those people with his life until you could get back there."

They had reached their trailer, and Josie watched them throw everything into bags and tie up a bunch of ceremonial articles in a sheet. She seemed about to say something and then thought better of it.

"Thanks for everything, Josie," Sam said. "You've made all of this happen."

"Nobody would have taken us seriously if it wasn't for you," Dean added. "We'll try not to let you down."

Josie Slick stood there looking at the shadow the boys had just beamed themselves out of. Then she looked at the sky for a long time and then went back to close up the community center. She found the Khan and White Crow milling about in the remaining crowd. "Go on, you two," she said, and the spirits obediently disappeared. She knew that people did like to rest a little once they'd passed, and neither the shaman nor the warrior was likely to get any rest any time soon dealing with the mess over at Bobby's house.

Dean and Sam appeared in the middle of Bobby's parlor and unceremoniously dumped a heap of ceremonial gear on his couch. "Where are they?" Dean demanded.

"Well, hello and by the way I have superpowers to you too," Bobby snapped. "What the hell are these things that have been showing up on my doorstep with a 'Get Out of Gank Free' card from Balthazar, and when can I hunt them? And give me one good reason why you should get an exception."

Dean was already climbing down into the panic room. "Can they like, smell each other or something?" his uncle asked Sam. "We'll get to why you kept something this big from me in a little while."

"I'll tell it to you straight, Bobby. Because I've been doing my damnedest to ignore it," Sam replied.

Dean emerged from the panic room with five scared-looking people. "We're all going to take this nice and easy," he said, bundling up the Navajo gear and clearing a place for everyone to sit, Bobby beside his gun. "Everything's gone to shit. I get that. But we're going to sit here and go through it all, together, so we can work on solving it together."

"Don't look at me," their uncle said irritably. "I don't know what the hell is going on except I'm playing den mother for whatever the angel didn't drag in."

Sam raised an eyebrow at Dean. When their uncle's figures of speech stopped hanging together and he wasn't even drinking, it was a bad sign.

"My name is Lester," said a young man, 25, African-American. The others introduced themselves: Rosa, Mexican-American, 30; Gerald, 22, and Mike, 32, Caucasian; and Peter, 31, Asian-American.

"Rosa and I were the first," Lester said. "The others all made the change in the last week. "My angel's name is Ambriel."

"And mine is Zophiel," Rosa said. "And I could hear him up until two days ago. He was telling me it was going to be all right."

"Can you hear anything from Cas?" Sam asked his brother.

"No, but it's not like we have a clear line of communication," Dean said, kicking himself for getting so immersed in their lessons that he didn't notice the silence on Cas' end.

"Is anyone going to clue me in on what exactly this change entails?" Bobby asked. Sam took him aside and did his best while the other six people looked at each other.

"Can you see me with your eyes closed?" Dean asked the others. The first two to be turned nodded, but the others looked confused. "We've got some work to do, but don't worry. I've had a lot of time to adjust, so I can make it easier on you." He stopped. "Did your angel do something to your ribs at some point, so make it so nobody could see you on the angelic plane?"

One after another the guests nodded and Dean released his breath. "That's good, or you would have led the enemy straight here."

"Good to know Balthazar had his thinking cap on when he told a bunch of hyped-up strangers to feel welcome here," Bobby said, rejoining them.

"When was the last time any of you heard from Balthazar?" Dean asked. It turned out it was Peter, the last turned, two days ago.

"He came by to make sure we understood what we were getting into, and we said we wanted to do it," Peter said. "The other angels came to take him away only a few hours later. I keep asking myself how they knew so fast."

A glum silence fell over the group. It couldn't mean anything good.

"You all did well finding your way here, because if Heaven is starting to figure out that the transformation process works both ways, we're going to be next on their To-Smite list," Dean said, beginning to rummage around in his jacket pockets, and then he stopped. "I had a list of spirits Josie gave me. Unless you already got them hooked up with spirits?" he asked his uncle, moving around. "Where's yours anyway?"

They all scouted around and found Rufus in a side bedroom with their three spirits, Khan, White Crow and, someone the brothers recognized.

"Eddie? I didn't know—" Sam began.

"We've been doing our best to keep it in the family when a hunter goes down in the line of duty," Bobby said. "Eddie says there's no hard feelings about that first spell of yours not working out."

Dean put a hand on his brother's shoulder, knowing that it was going to be hard for Sam to look at someone whose death he was inadvertently responsible for. "I need you to put on your spellmaking cap for me, Sammy, and get these five people matched up with spirits, quick. Why didn't you do that first off, Bobby?"

"Pardon me for not being clear on the people who don't eat solid food, spend a lot of their nights outside, and are pining away on some angel being the poster children for the Cause," Bobby retorted. "Can I have a word, Dean?"

"What the hell have you done now?" the older man exploded when they got on the porch. "All this time, you and Balthazar have been saying Cas is actually your inside man. You're using a disinformation campaign to confuse the uptight angels, and whatnot. When actually you're creating a superhero species that neither side can decide if they want to start engineering, or smiting. You've let loose this unprecedented industrial secret of how to mint new souls, loose in the universe in the form of your boyfriend, and you're amazed this has gone off the rails?"

Dean waited for him to finish calmly. "One of my so-called powers you should be aware of, Bobby, is that on a human level, I've basically gone to pieces, and then those pieces are going to pieces, since Cas left. But we have these things called virtues that we rotate into place to override emotions that are getting in the way of getting stuff done. So just because I look like I'm fine, I'm not fine. But we have a job to do, and Cas and Balthazar would want us to do it. I'm sure that's what they're doing and something's preventing them from saying so."

Two days ago, Balthazar had been interrogating one of the two most recent collaborators. Raphael was sitting there with the idea that they were going to harness this condition and learn how to mint more souls, even if some of the Heavenly Host had to become babbling idiots in the process. The lead angel had noticed that the affected angels were becoming calmer as their condition progressed, and took that as a sign that the symptoms might not make an individual useless for battle after all.

Balthazar had Zophiel on the rack. Once the prisoners understood that their torturer was truly acting as a double agent, he felt a little more secure that they wouldn't involuntarily come out with recriminations for having misled them into bonding with their vessel.

He was going through the interrogation session without much concern, therefore, until he drove a spike into Zophiel's midsection and the angel, very quiet up until that point, cried out "Rosa!"

"What was that?" Raphael leaned forward. "Give it to me." He lashed the prisoner with holy flames until any angel Balthazar knew would have been screaming for mercy.

Zophiel wore an odd, abstracted smile of contentment. "Rosa," he said softly.

"Did you know about this?" Raphael flung down the lash.

For once, Balthazar had no ready lie. "About what?" he asked, biding for time.

"It's the vessels, idiot. It's not a contagion. His vessel's name was Rosa, and that was a distinctly copulatory tone with which he said it."

Balthazar was completely thrown by Raphael hitting upon the truth so suddenly, and then he was thrown again by Raphael looking at him and laughing. Then Zophiel joined in as well, and Balthazar wished he could tell him to shut up.

"They say I don't understand human nature, that I am made of stone, but you, my brother, you roll around with these creatures but are touched by them not at all. If it has to do with the vessels, as I originally assumed with Castiel, you would be the last one to see it, poor Balthazar."

The angel in question didn't know whether to impale Raphael for his ignorance about the depths he was capable of feeling, or sing a silent hosanna in praise of not being found out as a spy.

"These comrades of ours have all gotten in too deep with their vessels, as Castiel did. That such a sin could produce the great boon of a new soul is perplexing, but we have never been ones to question a bit of good fortune, have we, brother?" Rafael asked, and then turned to drive another spike into Zophiel. "What are you doing that makes you free from pain? Answer, unnatural one!"

Soon, he had the prisoner confessing with a hint of pride, "It is called a fantasy. I believe you need a soul to have one. It's like a dream."

Balthazar tried to rally, "That must be why that toad Crowley cut off diplomatic relations. He's been tempting angels with some kind of unnatural congress with their vessels, and wanted to cover for it by blaming us for this ridiculous spirit-possession the humans are doing. I wondered at his blaming us for that, when we would have no reason to—"

"I've had enough of your conspiracy theories, Balthazar," Raphael cut him off. "You are totally missing the point. Hell may very well be behind this, but regardless, we have the technology in our control." He made an exasperated noise. "One has to feel sorry for you brother, that you have bedded so many and been unable to achieve this result."

Balthazar's Temperance virtue was stretched so tight he feared it might rip.

"What might be is not my concern right now. I want results. You are the perfect test case. If you can transplant a bit of soul, and this power to withstand pain, and whatever undiscovered powers they all have, then we will have mastered the technology. Our army will be invincible. You will then have my permission to direct your new laughter at the angels in that department who have been supposedly dedicated to soul-manufacturing for millennia."

His usual easy smile crept back to Balthazar's face. "The department? You mean you're giving me access to all the research areas? I can enlist the help of the upper echelons?"

"Anything you like. If you can make it happen for you, who possesses less sentiment than I, then I have every confidence I will be walking around with my own soul and imperviousness to pain soon enough."

"I'm sure I can come up with something," Balthazar hid his excitement perfectly when he bowed to take his leave.

"Bring in the angel Castiel! Bring them all in! We shall test them and see what fine warriors they will make for our army!" Raphael cried.


	16. Chapter 16

Balthazar stepped up to the unguarded portal to the most closely guarded section of Heaven that he knew of. The tall, narrow doors stretching up as far as he could see, were in an isolated wing of the administrative area. They had remained stubbornly closed to him for so long, that he could hardly believe it when they opened.

"Goes to show what's considered 'official business' around here," he muttered. The doorway to the Research and Arcane Matters section had never opened to him when he was demanding help for Etienne. Now, with Rafael's desire to engineer the perfect warrior, he finally had a safe conduct inside.

Where he was not going to pass up this unique opportunity.

Oddly enough, there was no one around. Balthazar walked through hallways branching off into rooms, and some of them contained strange instruments, or books written in unfamiliar scripts, workbenches and easels, but he was the only angel around that he could sense. Which was strange, because things were not infrequently produced from the Arcane Matters area, ranging from treatises on subjects no one read, to the more practical advanced battle strategies and battle hosannas.

"The Angel Rafael sent me!" he called, and his voice mocked him against the stone. "It won't go over well if you don't heed his orders!"

Unless these were his boss's bosses, Balthazar was musing, when he heard the small voice over his shoulder.

"I thought it was you at last, Balthazar."

He turned and felt himself drenched in wrath in a moment. "You! If you've come to gloat, you're in the wrong department."

"I run the department," the small winged creature said in a melodic voice.

"Of course you do," he said sarcastically to this force that had cruelly let him down in the past. "Listen, I have an actual order this time, so you can't boot me out empty-handed. You're going to save Etienne," he transitioned and carefully set the golden box full of dust on the table.

"Now I think you must be pulling my leg," the entity said, giving a little petulant kick from where it floated in midair. "What do you think anyone is supposed to do with that?"

"What you should have done when I begged and prayed years ago—" The angel broke off and took a good look at the form the elusive being∂ had chosen to manifest itself in. "Now you're just screwing with me. A fairy. An actual wee little cartoon fairy lass. I know you don't think highly of me, but do you enjoy making light of the injustice done to Etienne?"

Grace made a little bow where it floated in front of him. "It really was a rather apt simile Dean Winchester came up with for me. I rather like him. It would have been too bad for his being to be dashed to pieces in between temporal dimensions just because Castiel forced me to keep throwing him there."

A light came on in Balthazar's face. "I still have that book I confiscated from Castiel! Now that I know where you are, I'll make you listen to my suit."

"The book you confiscated from your friend in case you ever got enough courage to use it yourself?' Grace shook its head. "Oh yes, I'm rather a good study with angel psychology."

"I knew he was about to do something rash," protested Balthazar. "Castiel was always intemperate. But I've had years to think about this. I'm prepared to recite it from beginning to end."

"That would be very foolish," Grace replied.

"I left foolish behind long ago," Balthazar unleashed what he'd wanted to say to this fleeting holy presence for years. "Where were you? I appreciated the occasional greeting card's worth of encouragement: 'Don't lose hope, Batlhazar.' 'Don't throw yourself into the abyss, Balthazar.' 'We do appreciate your checking in, but no progress yet on that little matter you brought up some time ago-what was it again?'"

The sweet elfin face looked at him placidly.

"Fuck you," he said in summary.

"Pardon?" The diminuitive brows knit themselves together.

"Stick your cheap sympathy up your adorable little behind, and while you're at it, I'm going to fetch that book."

"Don't bother twisting my arm, Balthazar—I'm prepared to help you."

"Help-help me?" The angel was drawn up short by that direct statement.

Grace folded its arms with authority. "There are conditions, but you will find them very fair, and even agreeable."

It whispered into his ear.

"And what, precisely, about working under the Demon Crowley do you think I will find agreeable?" he objected.

"You've got to get the rest of Etienne's soul in Limbo for me to perform my end of the bargain."

"Of course," Balthazar scoffed. "And you propose I walk in, right in the middle of a war, and say 'Oh, Crowley, by your leave, old chap, I'm going to scour around Limbo for the next millennium or so, picking up my old vessel's pieces." He stopped to consider. "Actually, he just might, it sounds so cruel."

"You accomplish my mission, you accomplish your mission. Sound fair?"

Balthazar was already pounding open the doors to let him out of Arcane Matters.

* * *

The six Nephilim were chained to dockets in the walls of the interrogation room. Their eyes followed the furious pacing of Raphael.

"Since none of you can explain the process properly, it seems we are at an impasse—quite deliberately engineered on your parts," the lead angel fumed. "Castiel, could you be any more vague?"

"Perhaps it's still not the right vessel," Castiel suggested. "You said there is a third for you somewhere in Bolivia."

"And who's to say this one won't shrink from me like the last two?" Rafael thundered. "I can't imagine how you managed to trap and fondle a soul long enough to accomplish this monstrosity when they are so slippery. Not I nor any of my designates have managed it."

"You must care deeply about the vessel, sir," Ambriel ventured.

"Don't I have enough to think about with Hell already circling their wagons and the Horsemen roaming the earth?" snapped their leader. "What could I possibly care about a human here or there? They're going to be dropping like flies momentarily."

The Nephilim exchanged a pained look. "Oh yes, your precious mud monkeys, too." A slow realization dawned on the lead angel's face. "I can't torture you very well, because you all hide yourselves away in those fantasy things you manufacture. But I know how to insure your obedience as my consultants on human nature."

"But we really don't understand how our souls work," objected Zophiel. "Not very well."

"Telling jokes is still beyond us," another of the angels, Maziel, cut in.

"And we still can't imagine why anyone would watch reality television," Oristyon added.

"You understand better than I do, apparently. You're going to help me marshal all the little humans into my army. They don't count for much, but a few billion interfering monkeys will be the advantage our side needs over Hell."

"And if we refuse?" Castiel asked.

Rafael smiled. "The anatomists have been measuring you all this time. Yes, yes, your souls and all of that. But early on, they made an interesting discovery. All of you, especially you, Castiel, are vibrating on a frequency that is not ours, not properly Enochian."

A slight quiver went through the room, though the angels remained impassive. "Yes, we're close to isolating it, and when we do, we'll be able to manipulate the information you're obviously sending that human stumbling block, Dean Winchester. Soon your beloved will be working for us. We'll find him where he's hiding, either way." Rafael turned to the rest of the group. "We'll find all of your vessels, and make them poster children for collaboration with Heaven among that petty little uprising they have going. But until then, there are many things you can do for me."

Cas and the others had gotten to know each other quite well in their imprisonment. So with scarcely a flicker of recognition, the six transmitted their resolve to stop all communication with their respective mates. If Heaven had not isolated their frequency yet, they would have no new data to help them do so.

Castiel uttered many psalms of contrition for the danger he had exposed his beloved to. He should have known that there was no such thing as privacy in Heaven. He did his best to push all the desires and worries from his mind. It was surprisingly difficult for a seasoned soldier like himself.

Imprisoned separately from then forward, the Nephilim only saw each other at the meetings where Rafael's new strategy was put into place. Every day Castiel looked at his compatriots for just a moment and saw that they had neither heard from their former vessels, nor had any concrete knowledge of their capture. He tried to let his resolve be an example for the others.

"I think you should make a few adjustments to the plan," suggested Cas. "It doesn't make me feel anything."

"Heed the Angel Castiel," Raphael said to the others. "Our brother is rich in wisdom but poor in pride."

* * *

"Why, Balthazar, I would have picked up the place if I knew you were coming down here to visit," Crowley said, wiping his hands on his impermeable apron. "Don't mind them. I'm trying to instill a little initiative." He gestured to the several demons trussed up on tables. "You really haven't studied your Wartime Decorum book, have you? It's considered poor form to meet the enemy on his own turf. Not to mention foolish."

"I'm in a rather amusing situation, one I thought you would be able to appreciate," Balthazar replied.

"Do tell," the demon prompted. "Ah, I wouldn't sit there. That chair's last inhabitant might still be in it, in part. But you're used to all that, I suppose."

"Indeed, I have been a model soldier. But unfortunately I was given an assignment that I simply cannot complete. Not for any scruples on my part, I assure you," the angel clarified. "Raphael demanded that I find a way for him to be invested with a soul, but our research departments assure me it cannot be done. And from the little I understand of Castiel's method, Raphael is not a good candidate."

"So you DO have a technology!" The demon stopped collecting his tools. "How do you do it, and why are you telling me?"

"I don't understand it very well—as Raphael said, I'm the least sentimental angel around, and if I've not been able to screw myself into a soul, there's more to human contact than meets my eyes. But everyone knows that Castiel was obsessed with Dean. You heard that they sealed the deal a while back?"

"No!" Crowley was entranced. "He cock-blocked Michael? Must have been a well-kept state secret, because I heard not a word."

"It was decided to spare an archangel's pride from further insult. But somewhere along the line a little bit of Dean's soul rubbed off on Castiel. A few others have had it happen. Apparently the things can be transplanted under the right conditions."

"But not in you. And not Raphael. Not in enough to substantially enhance Heaven's soul-holdings."

"No. And no standardized method seems to be forthcoming. But until there is, I've failed my mission."

"And your upwardly mobile trajectory in Heaven is cut short," finished Crowley.

"I've had a few laughs over it. Can you imagine Raphael with a soul? And all cozy with a vessel?"

"Oh, yes, friend, I can imagine his tastes precisely. It's a gift of mine," Crowley said, removing his apron and brushing off his suit. "I say, let them overrun heaven with souls. Let them mint money until it's coming out of their asexual orifices. Once you have a soul, you lose all concept of its worth. As I believe you have already grasped."

"Of course. It's been proven by Cas' case. Once the perfect Boy Scout, he lost all focus when he fell for a human," Balthazar lamented. "They'll be sitting around holding hands or having duels over their respective mates, just like humans, but they won't be counting their cash like Ebenezer Scrooge, that's for sure. That's what Raphael can't seem to grasp-they'll be vulnerable."

"That's why I'm so pleased you've come to negotiate, Balthazar. You're much easier to come to a gentleman's agreement with. You're more like us-cunning, ruthless, practical."

Every word from the demon was stabbing Balthazar somewhere that still hurt, and he briefly wondered if this was the demon's attempt to get at him with his skills.

"My point exactly," he said, and gave a long, calm look to Crowley, who soon captured his meaning.

"Another fallen angel working for us? I'm sure upper management would be pleased to have you on board. You never were ideologically motivated, that I know of, so you and Lucy shouldn't part company on that terrain." The demon was rummaging in some drawers. "You are prepared to take up arms against your fellows? Pass a test of loyalty?"

"Of course."

"I don't deal with him often, myself, the big guy. He tires of administrative details, and he's obsessed with his showing in the apocalypse. It's an old story, you know. The people at the top forget how they got there, the overweening ambition gets to them, and then they must be cock of the walk, let prudence be damned. We've got a good thing going, our sides, which may be a single side, when looked at a certain way."

"I've come to think so," Balthazar said with enough feeling that it made the demon look up.

"It's really all of us lads, versus that pesky human free will. In a perfect world, they'd provide the cannon fodder, the meat suits, the souls, with only enough protest to be sporting, it's a little livestock farm down there. I could always see it, even when I was down among the muck."

He put the dossier he'd been assembling on the table, along with a knife. "You fellows are the cruelest torturers there are, with all your promises of hope and salvation. Where do you lot come up with these things? I'd love to meet your PR reps-very talented copywriters."

Balthazar picked up the knife. "Does it matter where?"

"No, a notch anywhere on your wing will do. The bit of matter you lop off will go on file with the others," the demon said in a businesslike tone.

While he averted his eyes from the burst of light brought about by Balthazar's use of the knife on his angelic form, the demon continued. "I've often seen it as a cooperation between departments, more than a head-on collision, our two fronts. Instead of steak knives, we're competing for souls, but keeping each other sharp in the process." He picked up the flayed bit of wing with tweezers. "And you, dear Balthazar, have the loveliest edge."

* * *

"You wish me to meet with Hell without Balthazar," Remiel asked of his superior. "I had thought he had made himself essential in the diplomatic process," he finished drily.

"He's nowhere to be found, and I can't be bothered at this point," Raphael answered testily. "I want you to get a feeling of whether Hell knows where the Nephilim's vessels, particularly Winchester, can be found."

Somewhere in a desert, Heaven's representative saw the envoy from Hell walking towards him in a cloud of dust.

"Hello, brother," said Balthazar.

* * *

Some time later on earth, Dean was pacing around one of the rooms dug under Bobby's house. He'd been putting up a good front for weeks, because as far as he could tell, that was his main job as co-leader of the resistance. That and advancing along in this live role-playing game they had going with the Navajo spirits.

It seemed like a waste of time, with the rest of the world going to hell, to spend time on what might as well be a video game. He and Sam had already met with the Sun, gone through his tests several times, slain the monsters threatening the people until they were bored of it. They'd come back this afternoon from their time with Spider Woman and the Wind and all the rest of the gang to a world still going to shit, just like the left it this morning.

Aside from the occasional news of incremental territorial advantages for the Cause, once or twice a sudden clearing of Heaven's or Hell's armies from a bit of land, there was little progress to report. They were holding their domain, but nothing more.

And no word from Cas.

"Dammit, I hate being holed up here all snug when half the world is being fought over like cattle," Dean objected.

"At least we made the stakes a little different," Sam tried to comfort his brother. "They're kidnapping people where they would have killed them before. Thanks to the network we created together, the demons have a statistically significant chance of coming across someone who's already possessed. And the angels are marking potential vessels right and left without knowing much how to create extra souls, but still seeing each one as a potential sire for a new soul. It's not our original plan, but there's not the wholesale slaughter we were expecting."

"Tell that to Cleveland," Dean muttered, referring to a site where frustrated demons had slaughtered some members of the Cause for having invested such a large portion of the city with preemptive spirits. When he was underground his angelic self felt cramped. It made him more like his kvetchy old Dean self.

"And I don't agree with your use of the word 'snug,'" Sam objected. "Cutting up these monster hides for trophies every day is disgusting. And we've gotten hurt plenty of times." The gods they were dealing with occasionally threw them a curve ball, and not knowing what ritual words might be expected of them, he and Dean had been tossed around quite a bit by these very powerful beings. Both of them knew they were in no small amount of danger every time they interacted with these Big Guns from another pantheon that was staying stubbornly separate from the one screwing up their plane.

Dean climbed up the ladder that led from the underground bunker to the attic, in one of his moods where not even the sprits would disturb him. Sam sat down at the computer in the panic room to get a sense of what was going on with the rest of their network. For better or for worse, the resistance was pushing the game off the playing board promised by Revelations, and at this point, that was what he patted himself on the back for every day.

So when the knock came at the door, it was Bobby who came, grumbling, from his library where's he'd been holed up all morning, to answer it.

"Can I help you?" Bobby asked after performing their usual quick ritual to pick out the demonically inclined, on the off-chance a possessed person had gotten through their industrial-strength wards around the house. He surveyed the large man standing in front of him with a broad smile. "Well? Do I know you?"

"In a way," the large man said, and someone stepped out from behind him. "You know him better."

"D- What kind of trick is this?" Bobby looked right and left and ushered the two men inside and bolted the door. "You sit tight, Brawny. What the hell is this, Dean?" he asked of the smaller man. "Did you get split off from yourself while you were playing with the Navajo gods and come back with green eyes?"

The two visitors looked confused for a moment. "I'm Dean from another time zone, so to speak," the Other Dean said. "Did I get a makeover in this one? And this is my partner, Adonis. We're the timeline that—entertained—Dean when he was stuck in a temporal loop some time ago."

"Sam!" Bobby called, and soon younger brother was standing in the doorway, openmouthed. "Did—this—happen because of your travels this morning?"

"Sammy," the Other Dean said, taking slow steps with his hands outstretched towards Sam. "You have no idea how good it is to see you."

Sam flinched away from the Other Dean's touch. "You dudes screwed Dean's up head but good, and you come back to finish the job?"

Adonis stepped up and put his hand on his boyfriend's arm. "We've come to see if you can help us save you, our Sam. It seems that Dean really did smash into our timeline with enough force that the boundaries separating our worlds were slightly weakened. We found someone who was willing to help us through because it was the only place we could think of that might have some information we're missing."

The Other Dean seemed to be fighting with some emotion and turned away abruptly to walk into the kitchen.

"Make yourself at home," Bobby called. "I almost hope you aren't who you say you are, because this can't do any good for our time zone, if you fucked yours up already."

"You let me—the other me—get taken by Lucifer, didn't you?" Sam asked quietly.

"You!" this dimension's Dean burst out from behind Sam. "Did you come here so I could have payback for almost dislocating my jaw?"

"You—look like you could make good on that threat," Adonis said, taking in the ripped and blue-eyed Dean. The Khan appeared to his right, aroused by the odd visitors. "What the hell is that?"

The Other Dean came back from the kitchen and was taking in his not-quite-double-anymore.

"You too? No way. The only reason you would be here would be if you screwed up your reality beyond repair. We don't need that kind of juju. We're barely holding on as it is."

"You have to help us save my Sam," the Other Dean said pleadingly. "Let us examine what you've done here for a day. That's how long I gave you."

Bobby and Sam were watching their Dean anxiously. "All right," he relented. "One day. Follow me, do whatever you want. But keep your mouths shut and don't do anything without asking. I don't like the idea of two me's making tactical decisions. Things might be slowly going to shit for our resistance army, but at least they can think that me and Sam are their rocks."

"A word, Dean," Bobby said as the two visitors sat down at a computer to get caught up with the news in this reality.

"What the hell, man?" Sam exclaimed. "I don't want to create a potential overlap between the world where I'm Satan, and this one, where that's about the only good thing I can say about this reality!"

"How do we get rid of them if they overstay their welcome?" their uncle put in. "They don't seem like their dimension treated them too well."

Dean hadn't noticed at first, but both mean bore scars they didn't have when he last saw them. Something he finally pinned down as an air of desperation clung to them as well. The other Dean was actually thinner than when he saw him last. This was not at all the same comfortably settled guy who'd needled him so. They looked more alike than before, even with his recent changes. "They entertained me, if you can call parading their perfect life in front of me and punching me a few times entertainment. Maybe we can learn what not to do and then send them back."

"Do you have that one-of-a-kind ancient book that almost blinded us, because I'm fresh out," Sam asked. "They might be, like, temporal refugees either unable or unwilling to go back. I don't want some guy that's not my brother getting all weepy over me."

The other half-angels had gradually congregated in the parlor, where they were looking at the visiting couple curiously. They all exchanged information on the angelic plane until everyone was up to speed. "We'll explain a few things to our guests," Lester said, and the Five brought the visitors to the underground room covered with Enochian cloaking sigils where they spent much of their time for fear they would involuntarily disclose their game-changing presence above ground.

"They're in for the shock of their lives," Bobby observed about the two guests. "I don't see how we can help them, and Sam's right, the danger of their changing our timeline is too great. Who knows what that could mean for you—I mean, you're into full-on beefcake in your other life, looks like."

"You really scored in that reality," Sam agreed, looking at the model-good-looks of Adonis, and then flinched. "Sorry, man. Not like Cas wasn't a catch."

"Stop referring to him in the past tense!" Dean exploded. "I know he's out there. And Adonis isn't even my type."

"That's good to know," the Other Dean said, returning from the conversation with the Five with a shaken look on his face. "I don't think we have much in common anymore, to listen to your fellow freaks."

"I think we have just enough still in common," Dean said with a crafty smile. "You guys are welcome here as long as you need to stay, as a matter of fact." He waved away his uncle's and brother's objections. "Anyone that can contribute to our Cause is welcome here at Command Central, and I have a job in mind for you," Dean said to his other self.

He sketched out the plan that had just occurred to him and the two visitors jumped up from their perches on the couch.

"You want me to be your double. Like, take a bullet for you, when you're too scared to leave this house," the Other Dean scoffed.

"He's doing no such thing," Adonis said protectively.

"See, I bet this is what got you where you are today. This is your Achilles heel," Dean shot back. "You had everything better in your reality—more confidence, a better education, years of networking, everything," he said to the other self. "You had love for the long term. And you still didn't come out ahead."

"I'm not the one who had to gate-crash someone's timeline repeatedly until he could work through his relationship problems. You don't know what it's like to have something like we have, so of course you would think it's a liability for your I'm-not-exactly-gay lone wolf persona," the visiting Dean sniped. "Let's face it, trying to attain the unattainable, like a celestial being, is no real threat to your whole macho warrior thing you have going on. You set yourself up to fail with that angel, you ask me."

The younger Winchester and Uncle Bobby began instinctively backing away.

"You think I didn't have something worth keeping when I set up this whole crusade against heaven and hell? You think you're the only one who's lost something?"

Dean's wrath was in place and the books were vibrating on the shelves.

"I don't even want to hear it from you two. You guys had me second-guessing myself for months, feeling like this huge loser. Well, it turns out the shoe's on the other foot. I'm meaner, and I'm hungrier than you ever were, Dean Winchester. Don't let the blue eyes fool you. I was born and bred a nasty son of a bitch. You think you can play the part without whining for your fella-when you've decided what you're made of, suit up." He tossed his old leather jacket from the coat rack. That coat, more than anything else, was him, and he believed it would deliver an authentic Dean feel to most observers.

The Other Dean dumbly caught jacket and put it on. "What is this?" he asked, looking at a book about Genghis Khan.

"Something from my inhabiting spirit, which we also need to match. Sam, give them both the 'Our Bodies, Ourselves,' speech."

Dean stayed long enough to hear Sam deliver the first part of the speech he'd delivered in person and online to all the hunters he'd had to convince of the wisdom of taking on a spirit rather than being vulnerable to demonic possession.

"You will be matched with a spirit rider. All spirits have been vetted as much as possible by experts. We cannot guarantee the gender of your choice. Look on it as a learning experience, or even a chance to live out an unrealized fantasy."

Dean waggled his eyebrows at Adonis, who answered with a sardonic grimace. "Bobby, you and Adonis here are about to get to know each other real well."

The visiting man gave a polite but dazzling smile to the uncle. "Is there something I need to know about my other self?" Bobby asked drily. "'Cause I don't see what we have to talk about."

"Adonis is a world-class Biblical historian, and either knows of almost every myth you've never heard of, or knows someone who would know it, so hopefully he can figure out what we're doing wrong with our mythological warfare." Dean said. "Plus, he can help us grow our network overnight. Am I right, Sweetpea?"

"How did you know that Dean—nevermind," Adonis murmured. "Yes, that is a good place to start, contacting all the people we know who also exist in this reality. I do have some hard-copy contact info in case our electronic records failed," he said, drawing out a small leather volume from his jacket.

"I knew there was a reason I didn't immediately deck you in retaliation for that punch you gave me," Dean smiled.

"Knowing what I know now about your new abilities, I've very glad you didn't," Adonis said, looking all around the other man as if he could see his angelic self.

"All right, earn your keep, Honey, and maybe I'll let you ogle me later," Dean said sarcastically. "I'm going to suss out the best place for my old self to make a cameo."

* * *

Several hours later, Dean crawled through the tunnel they'd dug out of Bobby's basement. There were several ways out of the house underground, along with several ways to block off the tunnel in case it was compromised. Digging the escape route had been hard work, assisted by some of their most trusted comrades, not all of whom were alive. Dean hated sticking to defense like this, and the Khan only reflected this anxiety. Maybe the entrance of his double was going to help turn the game around.

Shortly after leaving Bobby's premises the tunnel expanded so two people could walk together. After a walk of nearly a mile, he punched the key code and lifted up the hatch into the real Central Command, which was the back room of an old convenience store they'd started up for show.

Darla had her feet up on the table where some sophisticated computer equipment was connected to a server that was backed up with more fail-safe mechanisms than Dean could understand, though the teenager was remarkably gifted in this area. She was smoking a cigarette and wearing the same expression as she always wore while she kept an eye on the cash register and front door.

"Hey asshole. Missed your old face so much you had to have a copy around to jack off to?" She indicated the surveillance feed that helped protect Bobby's house in case of attack.

"It's only because of what your sainted ancestor, Miss Harriet, would say that I don't smack the smartass out of you," Dean said in the banter he'd come to rely on with this girl who'd showed up on their doorstep about a month ago. "Hello, Miss Harriet," he said to the spirit of the recently deceased old lady who knew more about Navajo lore than practically anyone else.

"Looks like your double shares your taste in guys," Darla observed. "Except he likes, you know, actual guys."

"Aw, don't be so disappointed. I'm sure there's a me in some reality that goes for what you've got to offer," Dean laughed. This girl always made him feel better, though he'd never admit it. Darla could be counted on to always speak her mind, and he'd done everything he could to discourage that among the people around him.

"They're coming out of the ceremony," she pointed to a screen. "Who did they get matched up with?"

"They would have found someone as close to the Khan as possible, in case someone sees the other me on the astral plane," Dean said, watching the two visitors walk around with the slight lag in the air surrounding them indicating a spirit's presence.

"So basically one of your spirit's underlings," she said. "That's kind of cold, don't you think?"

"Not as cold as me making sure they gave Adonis a hot chick as a spirit," Dean chuckled. "We had a really smoking girl, a hunter I met once or twice, get ganked in the line of duty not too long ago. I thought Adonis would enjoy exploring his feminine side."

They had a good mean laugh. Another thing he liked about Darla.

"What did yourself and your Bizarro Boyfriend ever do to you, anyway?" she asked.

"They sort of haunted me. Not in a constructive way. Or maybe so. I don't give a shit. Listen, what's Miss Harriet got to say about all this? Don't tell anyone this, kid, but you and your grandma are really my last hope, here."


	17. Chapter 17

Balthazar obeyed his summons to pick up a hostage in Louisiana, which came via cell phone, deemed easier to bridge the gap between angelic and demonic communication. Ever since he started collaborating with Dean, he had gotten rid of his old cell phone in case Heaven captured him for a rebel. He wanted no record of their elaborate plans to throw a wrench in the apocalypse to fall into the wrong hands.

Now that he had been enlisted by Grace for this undercover assignment in Hell, the angel was doubly glad he had no cell phone to link him to what he knew were daily coded text messages linking the global Cause network. Relatively sure that the torture of his best friend made him an unlikely collaborator with anyone but himself, Balthazar had settled in to what was a surprisingly humdrum existence as a fallen angel. Then again, if there was one thing he knew how to do, it was wait.

This was an especially unusual call, because most hostages were being held at certain housing facilities and then used as meat suits when the occasion came.

Balthazar showed up at the ramshackle house on the outskirts of Shreveport, Louisiana.

"You can see why I didn't want to say anything over the phone," the demon said. She was surrounded by dead humans, mostly in parts, some whole, and sitting on one barely-living person. "I don't know how you angel things work, but it seemed like too much of a risk for one of your people to overhear we found the big prize."

"That you did," Balthazar observed, meeting Dean Winchester's pain-clouded eyes calmly. "You can see I have changed allegiances since last we met," he said carefully to the human.

"I can see that," Dean caught on quickly. "I bet it was you who gave our safe house up."

"Perhaps," Balthazar said. He thought he'd been careful to abide by the pattern the Cause had agreed upon to avoid the misfortune of one of the collaborators being tortured for information. Safe houses and the like were only occupied for a week at a time and then their occupants shifted to another sector according to a predetermined pattern. Balthazar himself had set up the system based upon angel practices in battle. He'd vowed to try to keep members of the resistance out of his job in Hell if he could. "I think I can take it from here."

"And take all the credit?" protested the demon. "I wanted you to confirm it was him, that's all."

"It's definitely Dean Winchester. And we have some catching up to do." The angel ran his hand down the man's back.

"Oh, I get it. Not really interested in watching you get some," the demon said. "I'll go ahead and tell them to expect you. The bounty was for him in one piece, remember."

"I'll be very careful with him," Balthazar said. As soon as the demon was gone he hissed, "Who the hell are you?"

"Dean Winchester, just not the one you know," the human said. "And you are?"

"Balthazar."

"Balthazar. The angel who was co-leading the Cause? That Balthazar is now working for one of the enemies? The other me is going to flip; he really trusted you."

"I'm working undercover, idiot. We don't have much time. There are many things you need to know in order to pass yourself off as the real Dean. You're from another dimension?"

"Exactly, And I wish I'd stayed there, if you're taking me to Hell." He moved to touch a cut on his forehead that was bleeding down his face, and his leather jacket came open, revealing a mess of wounds.

"You're hurt! You must be in shock, because you should be feeling all of that." It was a miracle he hadn't bled to death, the angel judged. "Let me heal those for you." Balthazar reached towards the man, but he flinched away. "You're going to need to get over your case of the willies around angels if you're going to make a convincing show of it in Heaven."

"Oh, great! I'm not going to Hell!" Dean said a little deliriously.

"No, but it might be easier for you if you were. You're going to be studied as a method of transplanting new souls. It won't be pleasant, but you will be able to get some important messages to Cas. Whom I'm afraid you will get to know very well." He waited for this new Dean to understand.

"No! I don't want to be felt up by an angel!" Dean protested and then winced with the effort. "Can you get me back to my home reality?"

"Perhaps," the angel replied, not wiling to let anyone know he was in possession of the book Castiel used for that purpose. "But you really are a boon to our Cause here, so if you play your cards right, you might help us turn this thing around and take that back to your home dimension. Now take your first dose of angelic medicine and listen while I catch you up to speed."

* * *

"I thought you might be satisfying a yen for this one," Crowley observed when a healed Dean Winchester wearing only shreds of clothing as if post-ravished was brought before him by a smiling Balthazar. He poked around Dean's body. "So nice of you to leave me a blank canvas," he said of the freshly healed skin. "Was it everything you dreamed it would be?"

"He wasn't that great of a lay," Balthazar said in a hope to keep the demon's claws off the man. "Kept whining about Castiel. It's really rather sickening."

"Soon they shall be reunited, for a handsome fee," Crowley observed. "But I'd like a turn first."

The angel watched the demon put the version of Dean through a quick interrogation, but one thing he'd learned about Crowey was that unless he was specifically trying to get off from the torture, he knew very quickly whether someone was telling the truth. And this Dean very truthfully knew nothing of importance, besides having some impressive resolve before one of Hell's finest. Dean Winchesters must just be made that way, he reflected.

"Where have you been hiding?" Crowley finished up.

"I've been underground," Winchester yelped.

"I know that," the demon asked. "Where, specifically?"

"Nowhere that you'd ever find!" Balthazar forced himself to watch the red-hot tongs. "From here but not here!"

"Interesting. They seem to have developed spells to wipe the mind clean," the demon observed. "What will these crusaders think of next?"

The demon rummaged around and found a briefcase. "I trust you can haggle them up to a reasonable number of souls? I'd start the bidding at 500, easy."

"You wish me to deliver him?" Up until this point the angel had been sitting as a desk giving out possible locations for Dean's hiding place.

"Yes, this was your test of loyalty, didn't you know?" Crowley slid the case to him. "You could have taken your old mate and made a run for it, but you didn't. Now go to whatever barren steppe Remy has chosen this time and make papa proud."

Balthazar scooped up the once-again bleeding body of the other Dean Winchester and prepared to bargain him away.

* * *

Dean wished he could sleep away his remorse at letting his double surface, only to get caught in a raid almost immediately. It was late. The Five were practicing their angelic swordfighting and their Enochian in the chamber they had dug for themselves farther away from the house, as he tried to keep them doing so they didn't go stir-crazy. Bobby was taking a break from his "I told you so-ing" and Sam was asleep. Dean was puttering around the panic room and wishing he could sleep as well.

"Hey, man," he said without turning around. "Listen, if you want to deck me again, I'm all for it." Unwillingly, he turned to face Adonis, whom he'd thought safely asleep.

"No, I think it got it out of my system, Besides, you threw me back pretty far with those powers of yours," the man said. "I honestly think you didn't believe there was a risk."

"Kidnapping is all the rage these days, and not to sound conceited, but I'm a hot-ticket item. I never thought they'd waste me."

"No one could survive that many stab wounds," Adonis said softly. "Your jacket told me more than I would have wanted to know."

They were both silent a moment, thinking of the leather jacket one of the Louisiana hunters had delivered to the door. It was supposed to be a ruse to bring angels and demons to a double devil's/angel's trap set up on a supernatural fault line the Indians said ran through that part of the country. The safe house where the other Dean was killed hadn't even been in use for some time, so how the demons ambushed the small party of hunters was beyond him.

Adonis took a few more steps into the room, "Please, don't beat yourself up on my account. We almost bought it several times in our reality. This could have been his time and his Fate followed him here."

Dean rotated his Temperance virtue into place and took a deep breath. "You should get some sleep. I'm a night-owl these days."

"Actually, I didn't come in here to talk about Dean, well not only for that," Adonis said, sitting on one of the chairs in the panic room. "I finally put my finger on what was different."

"About me? Your fella and I aren't that much alike."

"Maybe," the other man said. "But I meant, about this timeline. It's all the religious fanaticism."

"That's what people turn to when times get tough," Dean shrugged and took a sip of orange juice.

"That looks good," Adonis said. "Let me go get the vodka and my notebook. You'll be surprised how differently people reacted in our timeline."

Dean and his double's boyfriend sat up all night, drinking screwdrivers and musing about why there were so many devotional cults springing up all over the world. Most of them were new, at least that's what the religious expert said. What was unusual about them, to Adonis' eyes, was that so many of them involved pilgrimages to specific spots.

"These are known battle locations for the Apocalypse," the big man pointed rather tipsily to a map they'd dragged out and stuck with pins. "It's like someone is trying to get things back on track with the way they would have been if you people weren't so successfully causing mayhem."

"It doesn't feel that successful, given the number of losses we've had, but I've got to hand it to Sam. He's a genius with this spell stuff. Any gains we've made have been due to him rolling out wave after wave of spells to fuck with the other two sides."

"You've not told me what you're planning to do yourself," Adonis said quietly. "You don't owe me anything, so don't tell me if you would prefer not to. But you're more like my Dean than you probably realize, and he would be gnawing his fingers off if he had to hide out underground."

"It's not that big of a secret—I don't know myself," Dean said, feeling the alcohol do that separating thing between his angelic body and his human one. The upper half looked down at the lower half, which was indulging in maudlin self-pity. "All these nice Indian people hooked me up with their myths, and it's just what you and Bobby have been working on. That's going to be the game-changer our Judeo-Christian apocalypse will stumble and fall over. Only I'm not smart enough to see how."

"Hey, didn't you learn anything while you were visiting us? You're plenty smart, Dean Winchester," Adonis said, looking into his eyes. "You've learned quite a bit of Navajo, for God's sake. I'm very lingual, and I'm sure I couldn't do that."

"Lingual, see, I've never heard that word used like that," Dean said in admiration, and he continued in that honest vein. "Book-smart people like you make me feel like a loser, Adonis. You're like the kind of person professors cite in fancy books and people say 'Back the fuck up, Adonis Georgea-whatever said so.'"

"Georgeakopoulos. I don't have half the creative way with words you do, Dean," the visitor said warmly. "And lingual just means 'of or having to do with the tongue.'"

He leaned forward and the kiss appeared, fully formed, out of nowhere.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry," Adonis leaned back. "I'm a little drunk and a lot vulnerable." He surveyed the man in front of him. "Say something, for God's sake, man." He shook Dean's shoulder.

Dean was trying to assemble his thoughts after being plunked mouth-first in a breath-taking, well-populated civilization that didn't belong to him but felt so comfortable. That was what he'd been so jealous of when he'd visited the couple in their home reality—a seasoned kind of love, a metropolis of attraction, where he'd only experienced a beautiful but comparatively tiny square block in his brief time with Cas. And all his other experiences were nothing to speak of.

"You have a major commitment to your angel," Adonis was saying in a voice full of contrition. "I should have respected that. He might still be alive."

"And he might not," Dean said for the first time.

The grief he'd been evading hit him harder than Adonis had, and this time the big man was the one catching him.

Dean shuddered in the welcoming arms for a few minutes, but it was too distracting to be held against this body that felt like everything in his life he'd been denied. It was as if he HAD kissed Davin Windham, as if he had stood on his own two feet for most of his life. What he would have been like if his Dad had finally seen him as his own man. Or he'd gotten out of the weird cycle he'd been in with Sam. If he'd traveled.

Kissing the Greek, Dean tasted all of the odd foods he would have tried, goaded into trying new things by this cosmopolitan and very challenging man.

The strength in the well-built body was not unearthly. In fact, Dean was stronger than him on the angelic plane that seemed so far away now.

"Maybe we shouldn't," came the deep, breathy voice in his ear.

Dean very deliberately ran his hand down Adonis' body. This wasn't wrong. This should have been his. He was tired of pretending all the time. Adonis was the truth about himself that he had never owned.

He felt the other man's mouth mold perfectly over his. He felt his heart pounding in a way he thought it wouldn't again. This was the One. His other One. He forgot abut the rest of himself that he had worked so hard to develop, thinking of Cas, how they could really be together and know each other on every plane when the other half-creature came back as his mirror image.

Adonis had this magical ability to smooth the tension from his muscles. It was softer than he imagined, being with this big man. Yes, Dean had imagined it. Why not? He had been trying to understand how this other self had it all figured out, and this foreigner was obviously a big part of his contentment.

"You feel like home," the lips at his chest agreed with a catch of emotion.

Dean had never been loved like this. This was a suit of ecstatic skin completely crafted and he stepped into it. It wasn't some weird testosterone-fueled one-upmanship like he'd expected being with a man would be like. The hands the mouth the arms enveloped him in this adoration that he didn't think he deserved but someone very like him did get on a regular basis.

He drew up the strong head and kissed him back. "I've never had that from a man," Dean confided.

"Never? You and- you didn't?"

"We didn't get past second base or so, in human terms. Actually, I have no clue how guys measure things," Dean admitted, trying out his manual skills.

"You're not half bad at that," Adonis said into his hair. "But I'm about to explode thinking of having you for the first time, being your first in everything. That's so hot."

Dean was suddenly trembling with a combination of fear and longing to find out what everything would be like.

"I feel, what is this?" Adonis asked, suddenly holding on to Dean's shoulder.

"This is the orgasm of your life just getting started," Dean said with a smirk, remembering the first time he felt the angelic energy. "And I think it's hot for me to be your first."

He enjoyed bringing Adonis, the impossibly attractive man, beyond what he'd ever experienced, Dean felt himself coming out of his own body a little to enter into the other man's. He saw himself as he'd never imagined through Adonis' eyes-almost unrecognizable through a furze of longing and lust.

It was so odd and touching that it brought him out of the experience just in time. Dean felt Adonis' climax ripple through his tissues, heard him cry out, and keep making noise until it stopped.

"I wanted to do so much more for you, lover," Adonis was finally able to say.

"Let me finish like this. But cover your eyes when I say so."

Dean enjoyed the heady sense of mastery from standing over the perfect body that was his for this night, that could be completely his in whatever way he wanted in the future that was suddenly bright. His own explosion scattered the man beneath him with light he couldn't see.

Dean took the other man in his arms, still weak form his first brush with otherworldly ecstasy. "Am I ever going to have control over my muscles again?" Adonis asked, tangling their limbs together.

"Eventually." He fit his body in with this man who had just narrowly escaped becoming a Nephilim, bonding like his soul seemed so anxious to when deeply touched. Dean kissed the mouth and chin that looked so different, so open, from his perspective on the pillow. Maybe some day, they could make an informed decision and bond. It was going to be delightfully difficult to withstand the magnetic force pulling him to his soul he'd just glimpsed.

"I feel like you're drawing me into your orbit," Dean murmured in Adonis' ear.

The heavy masculine leg draped itself over him. "After that, I'd say you were the one with the pull. It's like the sun, a pure sunbeam in my blood."

"It's not as big of a deal as with a real angel," Dean said bashfully, recalling using the same metaphor for Cas.

It was a big enough deal to reroute two people who had been resigned to emptiness. Their bodies were already moving together with joy along some orbit Dean had never hoped for.

"You may have your tricks up your sleeve, but I've got a few myself," Adonis murmured hot against his neck.

"You're not wearing any sleeves." Dean's hands affirmed this nakedness in front of him.

He'd not even been able to have a sexual fantasy about anyone since Cas. Other than the girl who roofied him, he'd been a monk. But this was made for him. This was glory. His mouth gave praise as if he'd done it a thousand times.

"And you say you've not done this before tonight? You must be a natural." Adonis growled a dirty term in his ear and then said something in Greek.

Dean replied in some of the filthiest Mongolian he'd learned. He opened his mouth passively to let it be overrun by the man's lips and tongue. "I must have been ready for it all along," he murmured as the man took him by the waist.

"Aren't you supposed to be fighting this?" The Greek's accent became more pronounced when he was very distracted.

"You shouldn't make it such an attractive proposition," Dean replied. "Do you want me to fight?"

"I could probably still kick your ass," Adonis threw him against one of the walls.

"I thought that's how it went for you two in bed," Dean admitted. "Two burly guys like that?"

"You didn't see. It's like a padded cell in that bedroom, no sharp corners, for a reason," Adonis whispered.

Suddenly it was as if the other Dean was in the room. They were quiet for a moment and then Adonis reached for him with a novel kind of grin. "One of the reasons why I was so anxious for you to leave our timeline was that I wanted to get you naked," he admitted. "You can imagine how I was confused," he said, guiding Dean's hand illustratively.

"I think you must be used to being the one confusing guys," Dean said. "I was confused."

"You found me attractive even before you'd had a real experience with a man?" Adonis asked. "That bodes well."

"I'm feeling the boding all right," Dean said, but he could tell the other man was tired. "Get some sleep. We have tomorrow."

They looked at each other, not needing to say more: tomorrow was suddenly a wonderful thing.

Adonis went off to sleep in his assigned room, and Dean did the same for a change.

He was shaken awake by Sam. "Something's gotten into Adonis," his brother said.

Dean's heart panged. He and the other underground inhabitants had gotten adept at avoiding the camera-visible areas of the house so Darla didn't see them in their boxers or something and never let them hear the end of it.

But Dean showered quickly and scanned the mood of the house. He didn't think anyone's suspicions were aroused that he'd just had his first no-denying-it, 100% gay experience.

Unbelievably, no one could tell when he came upstairs. The spirits floated through but were distracted. Adonis was on the phone talking in some unidentifiable language and waved at Dean cheerily.

Bobby had piles of books open. The map they'd been messing around with last night was on the wall.

Adonis hung up. "Oh good, you're awake. Drink one of your disgusting shakes. You're just in time for the conference call."

"Conference call?" Dean's head wasn't working right.

"With Josie, Cecil, and that rude girl who refuses to have anything to do with me unless you give the say so," Adonis summed up.

Their Navajo contacts had put them through all kinds of tests, him and Sam, and here Adonis had a conference call scheduled already? Dean turned on live feed to the store where Darla lived full time.

"Playmate of the year better have a good reason for getting up half my tribe very early, especially for Indian time," she complained to Dean. "You're looking chipper," she peered at the screen. Dean rubbed his unusually sleepy face. "I always feel chipper when I have to talk to you first thing. Fuck off."

Adonis put his shake in his hand. "No time to lose, Buttercup. Don't worry, they won't be able to see you haven't done a thing to your hair. Except Darla, and I'm sure she's seen worse."

A question flashed between them about privacy and last night.

"Nah, she spends all her time being a computer geek working on our firewall and shit," Dean said by way of reassurance. It was true. With all the computer equipment she could never afford before, the girl was teaching herself with a vengeance.

"Hello, Josie, It doesn't matter if you don't believe who I am. Good morning to you too," Adonis said, raising an eyebrow at the Navajo epithet that came through the speakerphone.

Sam and Dean turned away and stifled smiles. "Morning, Sheriff," they said in chorus.

"Good morning, Sheriff," Bobby muttered. He got tongue-tied around the woman.

Cecil's dander was already up from being woken up very early their time by a series of technical questions from the polite but very knowledgeable Adonis. Dean sipped his shake and watched with growing admiration as Adonis transitioned them to their new strategy.

"You don't have to believe I'm from another dimension to see that people are being moved with the excuse of cults and false prophets, huge numbers of people, to these places." Adonis pointed to the map and rattled off a few locations. "The action is coming to us. That's what was happening in my reality before I left, but it was being accomplished more by plague and fear, which you people have managed to avoid somehow." He nodded at Sam, who seemed moved by the praise. "You've been in a defensive strategy, but you need to bring Sam and Dean's impressive familiarity with your spirit realm here."

"We can't make the connection, smartass," a decidedly unpolished Cecil snapped. "I've tried everything."

"That's why I want you to tell me how to invoke your spirits on this plane," Adonis said. "The boys can keep fighting on this other plane and it's one in a million that there's enough overlap to make a difference in this one."

Dean felt the man's eyes on him briefly—was Adonis trying to highlight the one in a million or the difference?

"Our spirits show up on our land, and I'm not sure we want to be the ground zero for another genocide," Josie said drily.

"There must be a way to draw your spirits out to one of these other locations. I've contacted people in Europe first thing and they're already working on which is the most likely first spot," Adonis replied with that unshakable confidence.

Dean sat back with a cup of some Mongolian tea the Khan had turned him on to. "Are you on board with this?" he asked his spirit in Mongolian. He got a lewd comment in response. Not much got by the Khan, and they exchanged a lascivious smile. "Glad I've got your approval. Good thing his spirit tries to avoid him as much as possible."

"Dean, you and your Mongol need to be providing the unifying strategy between our Native friends and the Five," Adonis recalled him to the conference. "Where are they?"

"Working on their own private bunker underneath Darla's shop, so let me try to send out a call." He closed his eyes. "All right, they're coming."

He caught the look of admiration Adonis shot at him. "It's a cell phone without the phone, that's all."

"So in summary, ladies and gentleman," Adonis said, and Dean vaguely remembered that he was a part-time professor at some New York school. "You were absolutely right that what we need is a god-contest. But there's simply no way to have it take place without people being involved."

"I don't like it," said Josie.

"Let me explain. You know how in medieval Europe there were public burnings of witches, and in France people lined up to see the guillotine in action? That's what these contests between the Hebrew god of the bible and false gods like Baal were like, as far as we historians know." Adonis was pacing before the speakerphone.

"In the book of Kings, Elijah invokes Jehovah at Mt. Carmel, and Baal's devotees are humiliated because their god is a no-show. Contests are even mentioned in terms of end times—it says in Ezekiel that Judgment Day will be preceded by God's contest with evil in the context of the battle between Gog and Magog. Imagine the same kind of brutal festival atmosphere as a public hanging. People cheering and singing and whatnot was part of the juice that made these battles go."

"That ain't our kind of scene," Josie interjected.

"Most Navajo never accepted the charismatic Ghost Dance movement in the 19th century, but many tribes did," Adonis said without missing a beat. "Many traditions have experienced mass devotion of some sort. Shouldn't your gods have a chance to decide if they want to show?"

Dean was having to make an effort not to swoon at how sexy this smart guy was. He didn't know which was stranger—that he was falling for a guy, or that a professor was turning him on.

Their Native friends rang off grumbling but with assignments from Adonis.

The Five showed up and were delighted to at last have some way to use their training, and so Dean spent the morning coming up with battle strategy that would confuse the angels, who presumably were the ones who showed up in these contests. That's what Balthazar had said. Adonis was chiming in between telephone calls to add his own impressive knowledge of ancient Hebrew battles. Bobby had been mobilized to find demon battle habits from his library and sources.

The house was abuzz all day. Bobby had been stockpiling food, well, since forever, so in addition to his usual trips to town they had plenty to choose from for a lunch on the run. The mostly-liquid provisions for the Nephilim they bought using the store as a cover, so no one in town could guess how many people were really living under the one roof—and under the house.

Darla closed up shop early and came to lend Miss Harriet's expertise on the crash course in Navajo spirituality Adonis was getting. Dean had to admire how a good education really boiled down to the ability to ask the right questions and listen humbly to the answers. He could see the sullen sixteen-year-old being won over in spite of herself by the complete attention that Adonis could turn on like a spotlight and dazzle whoever fell in the path of his curiosity.

They had charts all over the house at this point representing long-vanished battles in Mesopotamia, considered a likely spot by some of the people Adonis had contacted in Europe. The Five were each put in charge of memorizing all the details of one battle per half-angel doled out by the Greek.

Bobby then stood back when Darla pushed him aside and made a surprisingly good dinner for the minority who ate solid food.

"To the man who finally got this show on the road," Bobby toasted, raising his glass to Adonis.

"Yeah man, I don't let anyone besides Dean order me around, but you do it without my realizing it," Sam said. "I'll work on spells for you any time. Welcome to the family."

Adonis clinked his glass with a bit of emotion on his face. "We've not gotten started yet. I wasn't to the point of offense in my world either, because we had no advantages to work with."

A hush came over the table at his use of 'we.'

Dean's foot rubbed Adonis' leg under the table.

"I feel guardedly optimistic for the first time in a while though," Adonis said quietly, moving his leg towards Dean's, hidden from view. "My mother had a saying," and he launched into a passage in Greek.

He gave a sly half-glance to Dean, who he knew was dying to understand what he said in bed last night.

"What did he say?" Dean asked Bobby later when Adonis went to catch up on his sleep. Bobby knew some ancient Greek, though he was unfamiliar with the sounds of the spoken modern language.

"I don't know, but I could swear that it's not something my mother would have said," Bobby shrugged. "These Europeans. What did you do to make him not mad at you for getting his fella ganked?"

Dean rotated in his temperance virtue so he wouldn't blush. "We all know how work is good to get your mind off grief, and boy did we put in a good day's work." They looked around at all the charts and plans. "He's something isn't he? No fear of anyone. He just calls up these major biblical scholars, no matter what time it is or what they're doing, and convinces them they know him, and suddenly they're working on our battle strategy."

Bobby nodded and sipped his whiskey. "I've gotta admit, I had him pegged as a cocky blue blood from over the pond. But he's strictly business. No ego at all."

Dean was strangely gratified at this high praise from his uncle.

There was a silence in which they raised their glasses to the vanished Dean's good taste.

The Dean from this dimension had the inappropriate thought that Adonis was actually very cocky.

"It's so weird that he doesn't exist in this world," Sam joined them.

"I heard him talking on the phone when he first arrived. His whole branch of the family never came to be. There was some disaster in his home village instead of the next town over like it happened in his reality. Wonder how that feels?" Bobby observed. "To come face to face with how expendable you are. I guess we all are accidents, but we don't get to see it."

"Well, he's just earned his keep in this one," Sam said. "You look worn out, Dean. You okay?"

Remembering the last time he tried to keep a tryst from his brother, Dean erred on the side of caution and stood up. "I think I'm going to hit the hay. My brain is full."

Dean did some training exercises and thought of Balthazar, his old training partner. It was safer than thinking of Cas, but just as worrying. If the always-land-on-his-feet Balthazar couldn't get word to him, he knew something had gone terribly wrong.

Nevertheless, Dean was gripped by the most delightful excitement while he waited for the house to still. When he judged it prudent he slipped into Adonis' room. He loved the feeling of the arm slipping easily over him, recognizing him in sleep.

The other man murmured something in Greek. "Where do I sign up for my first lesson?" Dean whispered to the warm ear.

"Yes, I think you could use some practice," Adonis said, and proceeded to make Dean more aware of his body than he had ever paid attention to before. It was true what they say about gay guys knowing how to impart the most pleasure.

Adonis quickly picked up on Dean's attraction to his professorial air, and Dean was doubly titillated by his instruction, and the hilarious metaphors the other man used to illustrate the proper technique.

"I don't think I've ever had a proper polish before," Dean gasped.

"It's a brave new world, sport. Now repeat after me," Adonis admonished him as he imparted a few words of Greek—yes, please, more, faster, slower, and then on to the very specific terms that made Dean blush—all the basics of a private vocabulary between lovers.

"We have time to work up to some of those," the big man said, sliding his hand up and down Dean's side. "I didn't mean to scare you," he said to Dean's silence.

Dean kept his face buried in Adonis' neck. He was so happy he was afraid to move. Afraid that the cruel force that usually rooted out his happiness would find him. The fact that Adonis didn't exist in this reality had calmed him in a place that had been upset since his visit to the other dimension. His brain had kept solving the puzzle of his fate, trying to find a way to the contentment his other self had found. But no matter how many times he could have kissed Davin Windham, Dean would never have had this seamless union like he had with Adonis at this very moment.

"Talk to me. Are you freaked out?"

Dean ground his face into the other man's scalp. "No," he whispered. Maybe Cas knew this all along, that this reality was a bust for him, and that's why he had flung him into the other timeline. This was what Cas wanted for him.

He turned Adonis' worried face to meet his blue eyes, which he was now grateful for. They made him sure that this wonderful man was beginning to care for him, really him.

And though they were not bonded on a soul-level, the two men exchanged a gaze that comprehended all of their fears and hopes. Dean was a starving man, he realized. He needed this more than anything. He draped himself full-length against Adonis. "This doesn't feel like one of those things we could stop if we tried, so I'm content to ride it out."

He held Adonis for some time when the fully human man fell asleep.


	18. Chapter 18

"Here is the hostage," Remiel said, dropping Dean unceremoniously in the middle of the administrative courtyard.

"Did he say anything?" Raphael asked, surveying the man Winchester who was still clad only in rags. Balthazar thought it prudent not to heal his most recent wounds, and Remiel was too oblivious to think of it. "Couldn't you have covered him up?"

A lackey brought a robe to cover the Dean Winchester who was looking around with wide eyes. "Shall I heal him?" the angel asked.

"No, leave us be." Rafael motioned him away. He considered the man. "Usually you would be taunting me. Show me, did they rip out your tongue?"

Dean stuck his tongue out. "No, my little visit to Hell brought back some memories, Forgive me if I don't feel chatty." He was hoping to get by on that excuse the angel had supplied him with.

Raphael turned to Remiel. "Well, don't just stand there, brother, Did Balthazar say anything of note?"

"You know better than I, Rafael, there's no telling what that angel is thinking. He negotiated a price and left."

"Yes, well, let's see you reunited with your beloved," Rafael said to Dean, who suppressed all but the tiniest flinch. "What's the matter? You haven't missed him?"

"I thought he was dead," Dean improvised. "You mean, you're going to kill me like you killed him."

"No, no." Rafael laughed. "I thought you knew that Castiel is alive. Remiel, carry him to the interrogation room."

The words "interrogation room" cinched Dean's impression that Heaven was not exactly the place he'd been hoping to go since he was a kid. He put aside his anger at his other self for being on such intimate terms with these angel things and allowed himself to be levitated into a bright white room.

Six angels were chained to the walls. Dean was seeing their human forms because he supposed that, not knowing the real Dean was capable of seeing their angelic selves, the creatures had to give him something to look at. It was easy to pick out the one that Balthazar had described as Castiel. "Cas, are you all right?" he asked, as he thought appropriate, at the same moment that Castiel's face fell.

"You've been hurt," the angel covered quickly, looking at his wounds.

The other five prisoners were exchanging looks of surprise.

"Yes, Castiel has been a good collaborator, so we found his vessel," Rafael said. "You may go, Remiel," he commanded and the other angel took his leave. "Don't be shy. You can greet Castiel, but we will not release him from his bonds just yet."

Dean wondered how porn stars did it, because faking a warm reunion with a non-human being was the most awkward thing he'd ever done. He threw his arms around Castiel's neck.

"It's a whole different world here," he said carefully as he released the angel. "The last time I was in Heaven I didn't come to this section," he finished.

Castiel nodded. "It is very good to see you," he said, and only the other Nephilim caught the emphasis on the word 'see'—they could tell very well this was no half-creature like them.

"Well, let's get started, shall we?" Rafael clapped his hands. "Bring in the anatomists!"

Dean clearly saw the apology in the eyes of the angel who seemed to be quickly putting together a scenario that would have brought another version of his Dean to this timeline. "It won't be like Hell," Castiel said. "And I know you are brave."

There was something indefinably different about the faces that were strapped to the walls, versus those of the angels who were swarming around with strange instruments, Dean thought. There must be something to this intermingling thing the other Dean had explained to him, because he felt fifty times as creeped out by the regular angels. He let himself be strapped to a table because it would be stupid to resist at this point, before he got the lay of the land. If there was one thing he got from the probably trustworthy Balthazar, it was that there was nowhere to run. Not until Castiel put his strategic mind to work on the problem.

"It's quite charming, watching two lovers gaze into each other's eyes," Raphael said about the silent pleading conversation that Dean was having with Castiel." "Kemuel, are you able to get a reading on their conversation?"

"No," the creepiest angel yet said, fussing with some instruments. "Nothing like what we were seeing before."

"Give them time," Rafael said. "Take out the other prisoners while I investigate further."

With a snap the others were gone, and Dean felt slightly better that he wasn't pretending before such a large audience. An angel stuck his hand in his abdomen and he screamed.

"Oh, how insensitive of me. You'd rather your mate do it," Rafael said. "Release one of the angel Castiel's limbs and have him expose the soul, show us how it's done."

Dean felt a kind of contagious calm wash over him. He looked only at Castiel's face as the only bearable point in this wretched experience. It hurt slightly less when this angel rummaged around in his insides, but he couldn't suppress a cry of discomfort.

"There, now what do you see?" Rafael prompted the anatomist. "Does it look different than other people's souls, Kemuel?"

"Not at all," the angel replied. "But I haven't begun testing." He gestured and a worrisome array of instruments appeared.

"Let us not be insensitive," Rafael said, and from Cas' eye movements Dean gathered that Rafael was every bit of a prick as he looked. "The lovers wish to get reacquainted away from prying eyes. We'll see what your instruments pick up. You may release Castiel while the door is sealed."

Kemuel fussed with some devices whose purpose Dean couldn't fathom and then left with the lead angel, who couldn't resist saying to Castiel, "We'd love to see your method in action, brother. Think of our army."

When they were alone, Castiel said, "I am very sorry you have come all this way to a fight that is not yours. Without my comrade Balthazar to count on, I don't know how to make your burdens less."

Dean picked up on the between-the-lines speech from the angel. "Balthazar is the same as ever, always putting number one first." He saw the relief come into Castiel's eyes as he understood that his best friend had not actually changed sides. "But I really need to get back to Sam. He's in trouble."

And so they painfully, politely pieced together some facts:

Heaven's strategy was to insert as many people as possible into the foretold battles with the armies of Hell. They didn't particularly care what the death toll would be: they were hoping to confuse Lucifer and his minions by these exalted crowds motivated for holy war.

"I find I know very well what would appeal to people's spiritual needs," Cas said softly. "In another world I might have been able to give comfort instead of incite the masses to war."

It was hard for the human to understand how someone that seemed pretty cool could be collaborating with the enemy. "It doesn't matter what side you're fighting on, as long as you fight well," Cas said. "Are you disappointed in me?" he asked suddenly, as if his Dean was right in front of him.

"No. The few people I could talk to about you, I've been proud as can be," Dean said on behalf of his former self. For a moment he saw this angel-human thing as one well-tightened screw short of busting apart. "It's okay. We'll figure this out together." And the hand he put on the shoulder wasn't just for show.

Outside the room Kemuel fiddled with some gears. "Castiel is vibrating all over the place, hitting some human frequencies at times. But the man appears rather normal, if a bit overstimulated, as would make sense for a human who had hit Hell and Heaven in one day."

"Let him rest. We can interrogate him later," Rafael counseled.

The next period of time was the cruelest form of torture Cas had ever experienced. This Dean Winchester, whom he assumed was from the dimension he'd tried to catapult his Dean into, was amazingly clear-headed and helpful. He was even sympathetic about Castiel's pain missing his own mate.

He simply wasn't the right Dean.

The other pure angels were neither imaginative nor observant, so they hadn't noticed the minute differences. But besides the fact that this human was 100% human, Cas could tell by the lack of sympathetic vibration between them. And he had to act his part with this similacrum of his lover. It's the elaborate sort of suffering the Demon Crowley would come up with as a punishment. Castiel allowed himself to think of his true lover for as much as a minute at a time before he felt like the longing would tear him apart. After all the torture, this was the first real suffering he'd reaped from love, and the warrior found himself ill-prepared for it.

"Stop looking at me with those stolen eyes!" his emotions wanted to scream. "Stop touching me with those false hands," he wished to say as the other Dean gamely kept up the appearance that they were connected. He surmised that the man had his own mate and found the experience equally difficult. That was of some consolation to Cas as he threw himself into creating fictional prophets who mouthed exactly the kind of promises people needed to hear.

During those times, Dean was interrogated by the much less thorough angelic torture master, obviously no match for Crowley. He told the truth—their entire strategy, such as it was, in his home reality, lock, stock, and barrel. Balthazar had told him about angels' particular sensitivity to falsehood, so the truth was the absolute best route. He got some consolation from thinking about these humorless bastards scooting around the planet on all these false leads.

Things in Heaven were gearing up for imminent battle. They did nothing to hide that from their prisoner. Dean told himself that it was a sad thing for it to come to this, but at the very least there would be enough confusion during the fighting for one of the sympathizers Castiel assured him existed all over Heaven to help him escape. He thought of Adonis so urgently it hurt.

"It's the strangest thing," the anatomist said to Rafael one day. "They do hit that special frequency sometimes, the one we noted in Castiel straight away. But it's usually not at the same time."

"Keep observing, my brother. We must find a way for Winchester to start misdirecting his own tawdry little band of outlaws."

* * *

"This trophy-cutting thing all the Navajo myths have you doing with your kills—I'm sure that's going to be significant." Adonis was at the front of the parlor drawing on easels while they all threw out ideas about possible fighting scenarios, as had become their habit.

Dean, Bobby and Sam exchanged glances.

"Okay guys, I know it's disgusting, but this is how you prove that something is dead in your spirit world," the historian said. "If you end up getting into the action, which is very likely, you should be prepared."

"Yeah, Adonis, you've been very helpful with creative ideas on how to approach this, but you're not getting something," Sam began.

"Our fatal lack of proper munitions," Bobby supplied. "Ain't no ordinary knife going to lop a piece off an angel. Much less kill the thing."

Adonis looked sheepish. "Have I been talking to no purpose this whole time? You're right; I know nothing of weaponry other than what I've read in a book."

"This isn't in any book," Dean said comfortingly. "The Five are over in their bunker right now trying to find ways to hurt each other, but none of us knows what's in these angelic swords that will actually hurt an angel. We can kill their vessel, that's all."

"Actually, we know exactly where to get angelic swords," Sam said. "Where you borrowed one from."

"Balthazar? He's gone. Incommunicado."

"You get angelic swords from angels," Sam spelled it out for them.

"You're going to mug an angel for his sword? Good luck with that," Bobby scoffed.

"No, but Dean has those emergency contacts from Balthazar. If we can get a message to one of them—"

"That means blowing our cover to at least a couple of angels we don't know before our big surprise appearance," Dean objected. Then after a beat, he said, "I'm willing to risk it. Bobby?"

"All right, seems like good timing," the older man agreed.

"Adonis?" Sam turned to their newest family member.

"Okay?" he said uncertainly. "What just happened?" Adonis asked as Dean left to find some notes he'd taken months ago.

"Oh, I'm so used to you being here, Adonis, I forget you're not used to us. We're risking our lives, that's all. Maybe it's a macho guy thing, but we don't dwell on the fact while we're doing something incredibly dumb." Sam explained.

"I still don't believe there's no way to hurt an angel other than this metal doo-dad," Adonis resumed. "Doesn't Dean say that you shouldn't tell a lie in front of an angel if he's wearing his truth-virtue, whatever that means?"

"It means you can get your ass kicked because they know you're lying," Sam said.

"But it cuts both ways," the big man continued. "He knows you're lying because you bother him. Maybe even hurt him."

"So the virtues are all actually weaknesses in a way." Bobby usually followed the scholar only a step or two behind. "Neat idea, but not practical, unless we bust out with some huge whoppers in front of these angels."

"Or some great big truths," Sam added.

"What are the other virtues? If we could out-love them in some way," Bobby shrugged.

The big man was hugging the old hunter before he even saw it coming.

"Um, we're all friends here, but not that kind of friends," Bobby said, disentangling himself.

"Oh, forgive me. I forget we don't know each other well in this reality," Adonis said. "You've given me a brilliant idea, Bobby Singer, and I wanted to thank you."

"You can't go wrong with a bottle of scotch," their still-flustered uncle said. "You have a think on your idea while I go on a liquor run before there's a shortage on that, too."

Occasionally there were signs that infrastructure was breaking down somewhere along the supply chain, but so far they'd been pretty lucky. Places where pilgrims were gathering in the Middle East probably weren't doing as well.

"I'm going to take some notes," Adonis said, gathering up some of the papers from their brainstorming section and heading to Bobby's library, where he'd been given the run of the place.

Sam and Bobby watched him go.

"We may or may not win this battle, but I still say he's a godsend," Bobby observed.

"You and Dean both," Sam snarked. "Are they going to come out with it at some point, or do we have to keep pretending we don't know?"

"I know you think it's not healthy, this instant relationship between a guy we don't know and our Dean, who is not the same as his Dean. But I say, people get together for worse reasons. What's not to like about the guy?"

"Yeah, he's a guy for starters, and not a guy-adjacent creature," Sam acknowledged. "I can tell you better than anyone that Dean's never been this happy. I just hope this is the guy for him in the long term, because he sure as hell deserves it."

"Amen to that. I'll bring back as many cases of rotgut as I can," his uncle clapped him on the shoulder. "After getting glad-handed by Mister Gay Universe, I deserve it."

After a couple of hours Adonis crept up to Dean's nest in the attic. The Five weren't exactly forbidden to surface above ground, but they preferred staying in their space with the sunlamps and their training equipment. Dean was the only one who felt this draw to be near the sky at night. The others listened to what Enochian they could grasp from a radio set, but it was a linguistic exercise, no more.

Dean felt something from the dark universe. He could listen to the static channel for hours, floating in and out of angelic conversations.

It was his favorite pastime with Adonis. Well, besides their other favorite pastimes

"Hi Sweetpea," Dean said without turning around. "It's all right, I'm not transmitting anymore."

This message to a specific sympathetic angel had been his first time actually emitting Enochian to anyone other than the Five or Balthazar, and Dean was still trembling from the fear that the succinct message would be traced to him, though the likelihood was practically nil.

"You think it will get to him?" Adonis wrapped his arm around Dean from behind.

"The message will kind of bounce around for awhile, so probably." He turned around to kiss his lover. "Do you want to tune in for a while?"

They sat down and Dean surfed the airwaves, translating the Enochian for his friend until they found something interesting. The first time he did it Adonis had tears in his eyes. "What? A lot of angel culture is well, like our gospel music. There's something to it, though, right?"

"You're telling me, from the source, what I've spent my life chasing in books," Adonis whispered. "There is definitely something to it."

Dean lacked his academic background, so he missed many of the allusions that psalms and hosannas and assorted songs contained. They spent many nights together in this way, rapt with wonder at the world that they were unraveling together.

"This one says—Dean, let me get this out," the bigger man said in an unusual rush.

"What's the matter?" Dean was suddenly terrified.

"When we first started messing around, I was going with it because, well, because. We needed something, both of us. But when I'm up here with you, I couldn't do this with anyone else." He let the significance hang there between them. "This is ours. This is us. You and me, Blue Eyes."

They kissed and Dean turned the set back on. "It's saying the mountains are singing."

"Of course, Psalm 98," Adonis said in that off-hand way he had:

"Let the sea resound, and everything in it,

the world, and all who live in it.

Let the rivers clap their hands,

let the mountains sing together for joy;

let them sing before the Lord,

for he comes to judge the earth.

He will judge the world in righteousness

and the peoples with equity."

"I wish I could go back in time and exclusively date geeks, because you make me hot when you do that," Dean started on Adonis' shirt.

"Wait, have you been hearing a lot of transmissions about end times?" Adonis stayed his hand.

"No, you've heard what I've heard. Most of them are songs of praise." He scanned his partner's face. "You're thinking about something."

"We've had a lot of songs about mountains. I'd say over fifty percent this week have said something about being 'on high' or on a mountain."

"You don't think they'd be so dumb as to broadcast their battle strategy on Angel Radio," Dean laughed.

"It's not word for word. Hidden in plain sight, as it were. Maybe they're psyching each other up."

"How many likely battle sites are on high ground?" Dean asked.

"Only two. And we might be able to narrow further by surfing the airwaves some more."

They listened with new attention to the angelic songs and took some notes before climbing down into the basement room where they'd been spending most of their nights.

"Are you going to teach me any non-dirty Greek words?" Dean asked afterwards. "I've learned the first batch you taught me backwards and forwards."

"That you have," Adonis enumerated some of his favorite lessons. "But that begs the question, when do you make an honest man of me so we can be open about this? My spirit has been such an incredible bitch to me I'm sure she has all the rest of the troop spreading gossip."

"Tomorrow," Dean said. "Everyone knows but I've been saving myself the lectures. Being a lifetime fuckup means everyone is constantly telling you your own business."

And that night they stayed in each other's arms with no care as to who might find them there.

* * *

"You seem to be adapting well," Crowley observed as Balthazar came out of another meeting.

"I don't mind explaining the latest war-habits of the angelic realm to anyone who will listen, but demons are not known to be good students," the angel observed drily. "Some things have changed since Lucy was in Heaven last, but he should know better than anyone that angels don't change that much."

"Their idea to put humans right in the middle of the mix was innovative," Crowley said, leading them to his private office where he kept the good wine. "Old Lucy has a positive phobia about humans. The stories about the older Winchester sticking to his inhabiter in some way made Lucifer turn tail and find a nice simpleton rather than risk getting too close with a vessel."

Balthazar was chuckling. "You know, I never thought of it that way, but it's more of a phobia-aversion than it is a superiority thing he has for humans. Is a phobia reason enough for an apocalypse?"

"I know how to pick 'em, every time, friend," Crowley handed him a glass of impossibly good vintage wine. "Needs are our stock in trade here. I'm a sadist; I have needs. Which is why I think it's odd you haven't asked about payment yet."

"Payment? I was never paid up there." Balthazar was caught off guard.

"Oh yes, I've been meaning to give it to you." The demon pulled out a small glass case. "Here you are."

The angel took the container, which was like a small specimen box with a magnified lid.

It was a single grain of dust.

Calling on all his angelic training, Balthazar kept a calm front. "What are you playing at, Crowley?"

"Come with me." The demon led him through a corridor that seemed vaguely familiar to the angel.

"Yes, bring back memories? This was how we first met." Crowley threw open the door to Limbo.

It shone with emptiness. There wasn't a speck of dust.

"I wanted to show you our little capital improvement project. It was so messy before, don't you agree, all that dirt flying around."

"Where is it all?" Balthazar asked without inflection.

"Dispersed into the universe where it belongs, don't you think? That's what people do with ashes, isn't it, they scatter them someplace picturesque and call it a day?"

The demon appeared delighted by something just beyond the angel's neutral expression. "Not to worry. I know where they all are. You'll get one from time to time, just like the one I gave you. I trust you can tell which ones are pieces of that man you were so interested in."

Balthazar's eyes were stealing from the glass case to the spotless room.

"I must admit, I didn't put two and two together for some time. You are so charming. But as you said once, a reprobate could always be counted on to act in his own best interests. And you, my friend, you never seem interested in anything at all. Not really. When you applied for a job I thought for certain you were on some cheesy undercover venture. But you're indifferent to everything because all of you is going towards this obsession that I don't fully understand but can't wait to dissect. You were biding your time until you could steal this human's soul-detritus."

He laughed at the warring reactions on the angel's face. "Oh, all right." He handed over another speck in a box. "You will be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again when you get them all? Several millennia from now. We are going to have a long and mutually beneficial relationship, Balthazar. Is this what it's like to meet the one? Tell me, because I am so looking forward to picking at this scab."

Batlhazar laughed. He laughed and laughed.

"YOU are going to torture ME? You wouldn't know how to begin.

"You're a coprophagous beetle, and this is the ant farm of the damned." He opened his arms to encompass all of Hell. "Here, the tortured are the wailing one-eyed, only here would a blind man like you be king. You have no idea what's what." Balthazar gave another short laugh. "We're not men. You don't know angels. You've never properly seen one. For us, the primary, the only suffering is to be separated from our Lord. That's why everyone is running around like decapitated chickens back in Heaven."

The angel pointed upwards. "Lucy up there, he fell because he already felt the separation. The fall, the rebellion, it's after the fact. I was a soldier in good standing until recently because the rules never caught up to me. Technically, I was still doing everything right. But in reality, I fell as well, and have been damned since I lost my version of God, and I've been pining away for the loss ever since."

Balthazar started. "Cheers for that, Crowley, I never put it all together until now.

Not that there's been anyone willing to talk about it with me."

"Not Castiel?" the demon asked.

"The Castiel of today, I'd like to know him better. He probably would have some insight."

"But you left him on your selfish little crusade," Crowley pointed out.

"No, that's where you're wrong, old chap. I'm on official business." Balthazar produced the two articles Grace had given him for his quest-a box engraved with sigils and a strange wand he was to wave in the air. He did as instructed, full of hope.

The moments during which he had to endure the mocking expectation of the Demon Crowley were some of Balthazar's worst. As often as he'd been turned down by Grace in the past, he never thought it would go so far as to trick him into this elaborate ruse.

"You've missed one thing, darling. I have your god. And I plan on doling it out to you if you say please in just the right way. Angel." He looked at Balthazar holding the useless articles. "I'll leave you to it, then. The door's open, but there's no escape for you."

Alone in the scoured room, Balthazar took a long moment to look at himself: all his virtues, everything in him whirring so fast it seemed to stand still.

All the parts of him that had been dispersed by melancholy and shattered by putting up a show of debauchery. They all were called back to him the way he wished he could reconstitute Etienne. Suddenly, Batlhazar was the best and brightest of his regiment again, singing the battle hosanna as they went off on some maneuver that meant something. He was the angel who spent his best moments walking in Paris inside a Gypsy lad.

Balthazar existed for untold hours in that room that had housed Etienne's pulverized soul-and countless others who didn't even have someone to mourn them, as he had this one human who became the only human, the only thing that stood out in his mind.

During this time, he came to the conclusion that he'd avoided for some reason—that for him, Etienne was the only thing that mattered. He didn't care if he had to bring Heaven and Hell down around his ears. He hoped Grace got squashed like a bug in the process.

The only thing that mattered was righting this wrong. Justice was his God. And no one as inconsequential as the Demon Crowley was going to stand in his way.

After a long time, the angel said without turning around, "What do you want?" He turned to find Crowley watching him with a lewd curiosity.

"You and I, perhaps we do have something in common," Balthazar said in a serene voice that almost didn't sound like his.'

.

"I'm glad you're beginning to come round," Crowley said in that hideously friendly manner of his.

"There is one thing that is true across all creatures and races and creeds," that smooth voice kept talking. "Desperation. You know it when you see it. The three-legged dog that just got another leg shot off and is crawling on its belly because instinct commands it to. The fly in the spider web, struggling, struggling. Oh yes, you smile because you think you are anything other than the dog dragging itself on belly and stumps, Crowley. But you, no less than I, we are desperate creatures. We are predictable within limits." He caught the slavish way the demon licked his lips. "Not limits of taste, you execrable swine."

Balthazar regained his calm, and continued, gesturing with his left hand. "On the one side, there is capability. What resources do I still have at my disposal? The other is much more fluid." He moved his right hand. "What can I imagine? What am I willing to give up, put another way."

He moved his two hands apart. "You see, within this area, almost anything can happen."

The book was in his hand so quickly the demon didn't see him pull it from one of his inner wings. "You see, it says right here—Do you read Trisian?" Balthazar asked of the worn leather volume he had placed under the demon's nose.

"No, I don't, old chap, and frankly I don't follow your little nervous breakdown. Which is a bit disappointing, because I can't enjoy it as well. But we'll understand each other soon enough. Would you like to come out now? You're a rather good fighting instructor."

"Certainly," Balthazar said, following the demon to his office. He estimated a page's worth of the little motes jumped into the demon's eyes. "Would you like me to go over recent sword techniques before our next S/M session? What's your safe word?"

Crowley knocked into the desk. "What have you done to me, you arselicker? I'm blind!"

"Arselicker. I'll remember that's your word," Balthazar resumed.

"I won't tell you where they all are! You'll go mad searching for specks of dust in the entire wide universe!" Crowley bellowed in his general direction.

"I think not," Batlhazar said calmly. "In fact, the last sight I see before I am smashed into dust myself will be all of Etienne's soul. If it manages to reconstitute itself, so much the better. But it will be together again."

The angel began reciting the keys to each tris, the "doors' formed by the little black creatures living in the book. They began humming.

To Batlhazar, it was the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard: the sound of an injustice righting itself. The world creaking back into place after its gears had been running off track.

Shortly, Crowley began screaming as their sisters vibrated within his skull.

The demon's screams were a close second in the beautiful department.

Finally the trapped little black creatures burst open Crowley's head to rejoin their sisters and complete the doorways. The angel saw a second implosion of blackness come out the ears as the demonic core was crushed by the powerful pressure of the tiny buzzing entities. Balthazar felt nothing. It wasn't even the exaltation of battle. Simply perfect peace that he was doing what he should have done long before.

The creatures were buzzing at a high pitch and turned to him as one, waiting for his instructions. This was going much more smoothly than it had for Castiel. He'd found his friend trying to wield a sort of hammer against a wall that was this dimension, and it wasn't being cooperative.

"Bring me the soul of Etienne Robert Valery-Vasquez. And the rest of them if you can."

The little black ugly motes were off like a swarm of hornets.

He reckoned there would be time before anyone noticed the head demon was gone, and then there was sure to be a melee for succession.

Balthazar put his feet on the table, careful to avoid the gore.

Looking at the runny bits coming from Crowley's head, the angel smiled sincerely for the first time in decades, and sat back to await his fleeting re-encounter with his God.


	19. Chapter 19

Waiting had never been so delicious.

The first winged black dot returned and buzzed at Balthazar until he realized it was waiting for the box Grace had given him, the one he had thought useless. He retrieved it and placed the engraved receptacle in front of the creature. The Tris deposited a pile of ashes much larger than its own body. Before the angel's eyes, a human being, complete with a body and clothing from what looked to be the Renaissance, took shape and stepped out of the box.

It took her face less than a minute to relive all of the torments that she had suffered and her life history before that. Fully reconstituted, the woman looked at the angel out of wary eyes.

"Hello," he said. "Don't worry—I'm not from Hell. Just visiting, you might say. I'm not sure what to do with you, to be honest, though I am happy to have rescued you from wherever you were. Hang on." If the box was actually useful, perhaps the other article from Grace was as well. He took out the wand and waved it over the woman.

Her eyes turned black.

"Oh my, your soul is still intact because I can see it," Balthazar said. "But there's a sort of skin over it and your eyes look like some of your demon tormentors must have. I wonder why this was part of the process?" He turned the wand over and over, but the symbols etched into his surface were an unknown alphabet. Grace was always inscrutable.

"I can think of a few things I'd like to do under the guise of a demon," the woman said darkly.

"That must be why there is a second step. Would you mind terribly putting off your vengeance for a few minutes and helping me sort through all the souls that are coming in?" Another person had just stepped out of the box and more of the tiny sisters were waiting. "I'm looking for someone specific."

The woman, whose name was Maria, was only to happy to take over explaining to the newly restored souls that it was the year 2012 and thus, anyone who had ever heard of them was likely gone. One after another, the souls chose to take on the semblance of a demon in order to infiltrate Hell.

Balthazar watched the process with increasing anticipation. He couldn't believe that Etienne would shortly emerge out of this mass of souls.

Just to be sure, he put up a sigil at the doors so no one in Hell would interrupt while Crowley's vast torture chamber filled up.

His mind drifted back to his first meeting with the man he awaited. Following usual practice, Balthazar had approached his intended vessel in a dream, asking for permission to inhabit him.

He had been in any number of humans' dreams, but there was something singular about Etienne's. Everything was so clear, even his image of himself, which, he found out, was very much like his actual visage—not usual for the subconscious.

The dream was of a bright, hot Spanish afternoon in a deserted square. Etienne sat at the edge of a fountain watching a horse wander around loose. The horse approached the fountain where the man was dragging his hand in the cool water, and it drank. Since everything in a dream is a facet of the dreamer, the first glance the angel exchanged with this human was of the part of himself that was identical with the horse, which looked up with a dripping muzzle and sized up Balthazar. The glance they exchanged unnerved him for some reason, he remembered.

The angel turned to the man. Looking back with the benefit of several generations of fashions come and gone, Balthazar could say that there was something special about the way this dark-haired young man with the café au lait complexion inhabited his linen suit. Certainly, men took care of their clothing at that time in history, but no one wore a suit like Etienne.

"Hello, who are you?" the man asked in Spanish, getting to his feet.

"Who are you?" the angel returned, wanting to make sure the man's dreaming mind was cognizant of what he was about to ask.

"I am Etienne Robert Valery-Vasquez," the young man said with a not-quite-click of his heels. As the angel would come to understand, Etienne wished to establish with his full name his Spanish passion and the exacting intellect that was so very French, and let the other person make whatever sense they could of this tension housed in the same slim, tanned body with a Gypsy face.

"And I am Balthazar, full stop."

Just then, a sudden wind arose in the dream. Small leaves from one of the plaza's sleepy-looking trees were lifted into the air, and one came to light on Balthazar's dream-form.

"Pardon me, may I?" the man had asked, and the angel let the leaf be picked out of his imaginary hair. They smiled.

He had explained the envesseling process, and the only thing Etienne was worried about was the fact that he was not religious.

"That's not a requirement," Balthazar answered. "In fact, it's a good sign, I think."

"A renegade angel, eh? It will be my pleasure to be worn by someone else who does not fit," Etienne had said. "I, too, think we will fit together well."

Balthazar felt a magnetic pull call him back to Hell as soon as the little black messenger bearing Etienne's soul-fragments entered the room.

"Wait." He halted the Tris with a hand over the box, as well as the rescued soul who had assumed the task of explaining the option to take on the form of a demon. "I'll take over on this one."

His voice was scarcely a whisper as he removed his hand. "All right, I'm ready," he affirmed, though he wasn't sure that was the case.

The man who appeared before him was the Etienne he first met. He was slight of build, neither tall nor short, but with a proud posture and crisply curling hair that could never have been dead, Balthazar thought, taken aback by what he saw.

"Who are you?" Etienne asked in Spanish, stepping out of the box.

"Who are you?" Balthazar asked quietly.

"I am Etienne Robert Valery-Vasquez," he said with an almost-click to his heels.

"And I am Balthazar, full stop." He brushed the man with an invisible wing, and Etienne closed his eyes briefly at the touch.

"You seem different; I'd imagined you different," Etienne regarded his current vessel.

The angel went very still in anticipation of the anger he deserved. "I can be anything or nothing, as you wish. But I'm afraid you need to decide rather quickly." Souls were lining up behind them. "Do you wish to join some of the others from Limbo who are taking on the appearance of demons to exact some well-deserved revenge—" here Balthazar's voice failed him for a minute, thinking of all that Etienne had a right to exact vengeance for.

"Will you be here?" Etienne asked.

"No, I could have passed off killing their administrator," he uttered the word with distaste, "but setting you all free won't go over well. I could find a place where you would be safe in the meanwhile."

"Are you still so stupid?" Etienne asked, switching to French, his language for annoyance.

"Perhaps not quite so stupid," Balthazar replied in the same language, drawing the human's arm through his so they could walk in the crowded torture chamber.

"I won't be parted from you again. At the very least I need to yell at you for a long time." The proud set to those long-vanished lips caused a spasm somewhere deep inside Balthazar, and he brought a finger to trace the mouth's shape.

"Nothing would make me happier," Balthazar said, still unused to the sound of sincerity coming out of his mouth. "There is one way I know of for us to stay together."

They talked while the last of the souls from Limbo were ferried into the room. Since only long-dead individuals had time to be worn into dust, they all chose to become spies in Hell.

"Welcome back, everyone. I am pleased to have you all as part of our anti-apocalyptic Cause," Balthazar said when they were all assembled. "Do whatever you like here in Hell, but I need you to guard your identities so you can do some things for me when Hell's army engages in combat. With you among the enemy ranks it will be a tremendous advantage."

As he outlined the strategy, the angel reflected that he had never had such a rapt audience. Not even the most focused angelic garrison had ever been so motivated to wage war as these souls who had been torn apart and swept into a corner to be forgotten.

"Could you grab those?" he indicated the box and the wand. "Someone will want them back."

Etienne picked up the golden articles. "What are you doing?"

"Being an angel isn't nonstop glamour, you'll find," Balthazar said while sawing off Crowley's head. "Are you ready to join me anyway?" he asked while the first stirrings were heard outside the door.

"Try not to get that on my suit," Etienne said.

The sigil was removed from the doors as the new souls escaped out the back door and through the hallway leading past Limbo. The angel and the man disappeared into nothingness, en route to Cas' old room and the union they had both been aching for. Balthazar had one last errand he needed to run before becoming a Nephilim, so he left Etienne for a moment after engraving his ribs with the Enochian sigils that would hide him from other angels' eyes. Then he sent out a coded call from a remote location.

"What is the meaning of this, brother?" Remiel asked crossly. "Don't Hell's denizens need you for some more urgent task on the eve of the apocalypse?"

"When I called for an angel who was part of the resistance, you were the last person I was expecting to see," Balthazar said in surprise. "Before you say anything else, please look at this," Balthazar said, producing the severed head. "He's quite dead, make no mistake. So please convey my unchanged loyalties to the other members of the Cause network."

"Give me the head and I'll show our brothers as well as submit your reapplication for the Heavenly Host," Remiel replied. "Though with everyone distracted, it may take some time before the administration gets to the bottom of your little stunt."

"No, I can't let you have this," Balthazar clutched the skull. "But since you can see I'm on the up and up, I need you to do something for me. Make sure Dean Winchester has some appropriate weaponry."

"Oh yes, we received his request the other day, and are working on fulfilling it without betraying his whereabouts. There's just the small matter of the other Dean Winchester who is in Heaven, who's been definitively proved the wrong Dean by the right one's message." Remiel nodded at Balthazar's surprise. "From the dimension Castiel tried to send his Dean to. A foolish idea, obviously, that has come back to haunt him."

"I'm surprised anyone mistook one version for another in the first place," Balthazar observed.

"Raphael sees what he wants to see, and Castiel has been keeping up the fiction because he believed the alternative to be worse," the diplomat resumed. "Having a Dean Winchester in hand is the perfect thing to convince Raphael et al that the other Dean Winchester doesn't need to be found. But things are becoming untenable."

"What do you mean, 'untenable'?" The diplomat's gift for understatement had his brother worried.

The other angel's face darkened. "There's a line forming for the chance to mark his soul, because it seems that whatever Cas supposedly did to him left not a trace. You know how Zachariah is about untouched vessels. He's a close second in the queue after Michael."

Balthaazar groaned at this problem he'd thought solved rearing its head up again. "This must not happen, do you hear? Such a link between beings from two temporal locations could have untold effects! Set him free at once. Everything in our reality certainly depends on it." Michael's second-string vessel was far from being a Winchester.

"What do you propose I do? Michael won't stand for being diverted again."

"For God's sake Remy, think for yourself for a change! I have too many irons in the fire to risk being put in shackles by showing up in Heaven. Put your best foot forward, now-when the new regime comes, and I assure you it's coming, you want to make sure you're not left polishing the weaponry in the munitions closet."

Balthazar paused for a moment. "How long have you been in on the Cause? It can't be long, and I'm surprised my co-conspirators would let someone relatively new come to this meeting."

Remiel's impassive face gave way to a slight tic. "I was told to join, just as I was told to come to this meeting by an, er, persuasive personage."

"Thank you, Remiel, you may go—be sure you follow your brother's instructions." Grace appeared somewhere near Remiel's shoulder and directed an impish grin in Balthazar's direction.

Remiel gave a stiff nod and took his leave.

"Hello, Balthazar—I trust Etienne made it out in one piece?" Grace asked. "Where is he—I would have thought you would be inseparable?"

"Soon we will be, but right now he's composing all of his grievances against me. I am very much looking forward being excoriated in what is sure to be an eloquent fashion." Balthazar felt all his virtues fluttering in anticipation.

"What do you want, anyway?" he asked suspiciously. "I distributed the battle strategy to the demons, as you instructed. You think it was pleasant to try and school these creatures with no knowledge swordsmanship at all? It was a sacrilege on several levels." Then he couldn't resist adding what he had surmised about Grace's true intentions for his mission. "And you also wouldn't have had your turncoat demons mixed in with Hell's army, which was your whole reason for rescuing the souls from Limbo in the first place, I bet. Not my search for Etienne."

"You only had to wave a wand," Grace shrugged.

"Perhaps if you'd been a little more clear about your instructions-I had to have a crisis before finally using that book!"

"My crisis will be yours shortly," the fairy-like being said, bringing Balthazar up short.

"You? You don't have crises," he objected.

"You may not be able to tell, but I am currently wrestling with myself," it said primly.

"Just like the rest of us," the angel observed. "How's that going for you?"

"Rather badly. You see, an angel can't see multiple realities at once, but I can. There's a me in another dimension who is quite put out by the way my reality is foiling her prophesies."

"The other Dean," Balthazar said. "But I don't see what that has to do with me."

"It has everything to do with you and Etienne." The angel gave a look of alarm. "Your primary reason for being sent to Hell was, in fact, to rescue him. As has been foretold." It took in Balthazar's uncomprehending stare. "The prophesy says that in the end times, a righteous man will open the gates of Hell. In our dimension, this is Etienne. In the other timeline, the righteous man is Adonis, the partner of the Dean Winchester currently to be found in our Heaven."

Balthazar couldn't begin to understand what Grace was saying, because he was stuck on one idea. "In your reality, the best you could do was to keep a man in Hell for a century in earth years until he was ground to bits?" he exploded.

"It was your timetable, not mine," the sprite-like thing retorted. "You were ready to fall in love in the late 19th century."

"Me." The angel's new happiness deflated. "I did this to him after all."

"Not exactly," Grace replied with a rare softness. "He did it to you by being what you needed—the motivation for an angel to take on Hell. Far be it from me to say that falling in love is blameworthy." Then the moment was gone and its businesslike tone returned. "You need to get this other Dean Winchester out of heaven so he can fulfill his destiny."

"I thought it was his partner who was going to open Hell—presumably to rescue Sam Winchester?"

"Yes, yes, but in both realities Dean Winchester is the man who storms heaven."

"I can see how already being in Heaven would put a damper on that for the other Dean, but our Dean has been planning on taking Heaven by storm for months, so no worries on that account," Balthazar pointed out.

"Not exactly," Grace said and gave a summary of the wrong Dean's relationship with some other world's Righteous Man.

"How could he do this to Castiel?" the angel fumed. "I know humans have a very short attention span, but if it were a person he'd lost, he scarcely gave the body a chance to get cold in the ground!"

"Your brother was the one who cracked open the wall to that timeline using his beloved's head, so there's no telling what kind of unnatural overlap is drawing them together," the fairy replied. "But this ruins not one, but two apocalypses. Because I doubt his plans now include rescuing an angel he believes to be dead."

"Castiel really couldn't find a way to get some word to him?" Balthazar wondered. "He's so cunning with this sort of thing."

"The anatomists have him rather closely monitored, but I fear that our Castiel is not well. Not well at all."

The angel looked up sharply. "A problem with the bonding process?"

Balthazar uttered an oath. The selfish part of him was wishing this conversation over so that he could achieve the long-delayed bond with Etienne.

"You're the single most powerful entity I've ever interacted with. Why complain to me when you can beam them up or something?"

"It's not that easy —they've already grown roots, as it were. The two men will have to be uprooted and transplanted. It's very tricky!" the fairy said peevishly.

"You'll pardon me, but I still say that none of this sounds like my problem."

"Castiel has always had a very clear sense of his destiny," Grace said with a kind of affection. "As have you, in your own way. It's why you have always been close, I think. Even now your brother is doing what he needs to do to avert the apocalypse. But..."

"But what?" Balthazar pressed.

"But hurry," Grace said.

The next day a knock came at Bobby Singer's door. "Oh good," Adonis said, accepting the package. "My books are here," he called into the house, shutting the door.

He opened the box and screamed.

Within seconds every member of the household had rushed into the front parlor, where the big, statuesque man was shaking like a leaf and pointing at the cardboard container.

"It's for you," he said to Bobby, indicating the label he had failed to read.

Bobby peered into the package. "Actually, it's for you, Dean," he said to his nephew who was rubbing Adonis' back soothingly.

Dean joined his brother and Darla, who happened to be visiting, as well as Lester of the Five, who were poking at the contents.

"Is he dead-dead, or just vessel-dead?" Sam asked of Crowley's head.

"My written Enochian sucks," Dean said, examining the note written on the inside of the box. "This is a 'do not putrefy' sigil-that I've seen before. This other thing—vengeance? Angel—travel—vengeance? Love? I don't know," he shook his head. "I'm going to have to figure it out. But it's obviously from Balthazar. I don't think Cas knows what FedEx is," he finished glumly. "I would feel it if this was from him."

Now Adonis was rubbing his back. "You said yourself this could mean any number of things," he whispered. "Don't jump to any conclusions."

"I conclude that that was one hell of a shriek," Bobby said to dispel the tension. "Guess you've got a big set of pipes to match the rest of ya."

"I think that was more like a screech." Sam picked up on one of their favorite pastimes—teasing the burly guy on his occasional squeamishness. "What would you call that sound, Darla?"

"Sounded like a hissy fit, to me," she said, fully a member of the family by now. "I can't wait to do the instant replay when I get back to the video feed."

Dean was shooting hateful looks in their direction as he put a protective arm around Adonis.

"Pardon me for not being fully conversant with dead things and severed body parts like the rest of you," the big man huffed.

"Why would Balthazar send us Crowley's head, anyway?" Sam mused.

"I may not be a hunter, but I could tell you that," Adonis tossed over his shoulder as Dean pulled him to their room for some intensive comforting. "You put it on a spike and use it to intimidate your enemies. They did it in the Crusades all the time."


	20. Chapter 20

Remiel gathered up some of the thin tablets that Castiel had littered all over the room he had been relegated to.

"You have written enough, brother. Rest now. No one is paying any further attention in these final hours before the battle," the ex-diplomat said. Now that there were no more negotiations with Hell, Remiel had been assigned the supervision of the most cooperative rebel, Castiel, as he was always assigned the most boring or lowly tasks for reasons no one seemed to remember.

"No, not quite enough, Remiel, though I thank you for your concern," Castiel said in that vague way he had. It was impossible to tell if he understood that his guard was a member of the cause he helped start and seemed to have little interest in. "After hearing your good news I can scarcely check the movement of my stylus."

Remiel remained impassive. "Dean did look well, as I told you. He has evidently been training for this moment and appreciated the weapons." He watched another tablet be filled with prophesy. "What role you have played in the apocalypse is insignificant—I doubt that he will reproach you for what you have done. Peace now, Castiel. It will all be decided in Bolivia tomorrow."

Cas finally looked his brother square in the face. "Yes it will. Will you be going?"

"No, someone has to mind the prison," Remiel said in his usual flat tone.

Leaving Cas alone in the room designated for his use in the prison wing, his jailer carried the filled tablets to the records room and stored them on a shelf. He picked one up and tried once more to understand what it was about these words that upset the other Nephilim so that they had to separate Castiel from the others. The wailing and weeping in the prison seemed to be contagious, caused by the angel who fed words to these false prophets. No one could stand it after a while, so Castiel was left to scribble in his private room, where the false Dean was brought from time to time for the experiments no one believed would pan out anymore.

The psalms written by Castiel's hand employed all the usual figures of speech: the Lord will come to those who have been faithful and will smite those who have strayed from the truth. There was very little mention of the enemy, however. While most of the approved psalms spent a great deal of time talking about the wickedness of the enemy and what would happen to him once the Lord came to answer the righteous man's plea, these focused on the reunion with a god that satisfied everything the prophet had ever pined for—union.

Remiel shook his head at this simple formula that had been enough to motivate thousands of people to leave everything and follow the humans mouthing the words supplied by a lovesick angel. Castiel had feverish eyes and his yearning had even the most insensible angels such as Remiel recoiling instinctively, but his words were so tender that they appeared to be the most potent weapon Heaven had—something that few humans could resist.

The angel finished shelving the prophesies that were pouring out of the false prophets' mouths at that moment, and wondered what Castiel would write if he knew the truth about his meeting with the real Dean Winchester.

"Hello, cousin, thank you for acceding to our request," Dean had said, making the ritual greeting. "It's so cool to be practicing my Enochian!"

The mostly-man was bubbling over in excitement that was not shared by the perennially unimpressed Remiel, who gave his usual stiff bow. "What's your name? Do you have a mate somewhere? Is that why you're in the Cause?" The man had continued.

"I am Remiel, and no, I have no interest in the Cause for that reason, but rather prefer to keep my own counsel regarding my motivations. Here are your swords, and a few sigils I have copied for you to counteract some of the ones being used by Heaven's army."

The Winchester man was scanning the page of Enochian he'd just received. "Do I need to know what these say? Because I can't make heads or tails of the written stuff, sorry. I didn't even know what Balthazar's message said when he sent me the head. Have you heard from him?"

Remiel had impassively filed away the fact that Balthazar's message about Castiel being alive and well had not been delivered. Just as well, he thought quickly. "I saw Balthazar long enough for him to—impress upon me—that his loyalties to the resistance had never wavered, but he is occupied with his own schemes at the moment and unreachable, much as he has been for some time."

"It's really good to talk to you," the human insisted upon trying to be warm to the chilly ex-diplomat. "When Balthazar stopped answering and I stopped feeling Cas out there we were sure that the whole angelic side of the network had been compromised. I wanted to send out a message just in case but was overruled. Everyone else said we had to preserve one arm of the resistance we knew was intact."

"A sound idea," Remiel said. So the man hadn't just dropped Castiel because he was no longer interested. He waited for the inevitable question.

"He's—he's gone, isn't he? Cas, I mean." This Nephilim gazed imploringly at him on both planes.

"I have had no word from him." It was really too easy to get by without saying anything substantial when talking with those unused to diplomacy, and Remiel had over a millennium's worth of practice at saying nothing quotable while misleading the unwary.

Dean's face started to collapse and he recovered. "Then I'm going to kick some ass in his name. It is Bolivia, right?"

"Indeed it is." Remiel's impassive visage did not betray his surprise at the man's knowledge of the chosen first battleground. Could he have other contacts in Heaven? "You have sympathizers you are planning to bring with you, I take it?"

"We've been moving people bit by bit so as not to attract attention. Everyone but me, that is. The other changed ones like me have been taking people from all over the world to the battleground while I wait at home. Tell you what, Remiel, I can't wait to get out from this house and kick some demon ass."

The angel looked at the fist poised in front of him and realized he was supposed to do something with it, but was unsure what.

"It's a fist bump, like the angel greeting," Dean explained. "Like it or not, angels and humans are fighting for the same Cause, so you might as well learn some human culture."

Remiel stared at him and resumed, "By the way, you should know that there are some loyal to our side who are fighting amongst the demonic hordes. This is the last of the articles I entrust you with today." He withdrew a silver implement on a chain.

"What is that?" Winchester asked, reaching his hand out to touch the burnished surface.

"A thurible filled with a certain substance that will make you stand out to those of us in the know. I hope you've resolved yourself that humans will be effectively your enemies as they fight at the behest of Heaven." He saw the man's jaw set and he felt a slight sympathy for someone who was going against his fellow creatures. "This is most complicated, even for me, keeping this three-front situation straight. Those of you who are treated with this incense will also be able to see your comrades in the other two armies. For extra security, the following Enochian incantation must be used concurrently."

Thankfully, the changeling had been too occupied inspecting the weapons and learning the incantation to ask any more questions. "You and your brother have become very familiar with another spiritual plane, I hear. You have a plan once you invoke these other beings, I hope?" Remiel thought this aspect of the plan to be messy, bordering on suicidal, but then again, no one ever asked what he thought.

"Yeah, I've been getting some, um, help from somebody on that. We have a few plans in mind." The human blushed and his virtues on the angelic plane whirred very fast.

"If that is all, I must get back to my other duties," he had said, and the evidence of the man's transferred affections were still clear in his mind, even as Remiel could not claim to understand what an emotion was.

He knew what intrigue was, however, having survived coups d'etat in Heaven and Hell while managing to keep from getting besmirched by everyone else's mess. Remiel closed the door to the archive and wished yet again that his unparalleled skills as a go-between had not placed him as the one ferrying half-truths between members of a cause he cared little for.

But filtering intelligence between two lovers? He'd never have agreed to such a demeaning task if Grace hadn't made its case so forcefully.

Remiel wiped away the memory with a wing. To think that Grace in such an undignified visage had ruffled the unflappable Remiel.

* * *

Sam was following White Crow's steps in the magical circle, one of dozens the Native garrison had staked out all through the carnival atmosphere in the lofty city of Colquechaca, Bolivia, that was soon to give way to the three armies.

By now, Sam was one medicine man among many. He'd discovered that by moving among so many Indians as if he belonged, he did, and he could enjoy some of the relative invisibility native folk had when they wanted it. No one in the crowd seemed to question that they would be tracing out circles and chanting with feathers and herbs—there were local tribes who made way for the Cause representatives as if they expected them, so evidently some people knew they were coming.

Once ferried to the high-altitude town by the Five, the North American indigenous people used their abilities to call down powerful spirits while blending in with the local color. One by one the magical circles had that quickening thing happen that Sam had experienced so many times before but never at such high stakes, never in public, in the middle of throngs of people, had he helped create these little islands of stillness. They didn't always see eye to eye, but his inhabiting spirit made things happen, igniting Sam's spells where they needed a push and wiping away distractions in an instant.

Sam knew he'd been singlehandedly leading their front of the apocalypse for some time now. Dean was best in action, so he didn't hold it against his brother for pacing miles a day for the last several months. But Sam had mixed feelings about Dean's love affair carried out in the final days before their combat.

Dean and Adonis were a great pair when it came to strategy—when it came to anything—but Sam felt a little left out. Before it would have been the two brothers conspiring late into the night, not the two guys taking breaks from their maps in order to make out a little.

It had been a great experience for Sam, sending out directives that went around the globe and were followed immediately by their "troops," as he' come to think of them. Together, he and other hunters had put into practice some of the concepts he'd adapted from his Native American teachers. What you lack in manpower you make up for in chaos, was the main one. Disrupt the enemy's steps and then muddle his thinking, make his heartbeat a riot and his breath a maelstrom. That was the textual citation from White Crow, which he came to understand meant disrupt, deceive and demoralize.

Around the world, spells were loosed at preordained intervals. They didn't have enough trained spell-casters to preemptively posses everyone in the world, so the Cause network painted devil's traps and other anti-demonic sigils across broad spaces using lasers the way Samuel Colt had used a railway system. They hid them in billboards. They blessed and re-blessed whole municipal water systems so that entire cities were awash with Holy Water. Each region had its own wisdom about preventing demon attacks, and hundreds upon hundreds of booby traps were set up across the land, making it seem as though their numbers were greater than they were.

Demons began contenting themselves with the odd kill or kidnapping, but they had none of the cockiness they used to torment people with. For one thing, the first thing any new recruit was taught was always the spell for revealing possessed people in their midst. With the element of surprise yanked out from underneath them, the demons weren't half so badass, Sam chuckled to himself.

And after all of his experiences as one of the demon hunting twins in the Other Realms, Sam was able to kill them in ways they didn't even know they could be killed. In that sense, quite a lot had begun to overlap from the Spirit Worlds. Sam was a better hunter than he'd dreamed of being. He wasn't afraid. Ha been going out to draw demons in to various traps with no fear at all. An arrow with a certain kind of tip. A poison spider. A waft of one kind of cornmeal in the wrong direction from what it was meant to go—and they were toast. Not everyone had such good results, but it was enough to make the demon world think they had this amazing technology the rebels were sitting on. Which he wasn't sure was actually the case, but he and his brother had always trusted in instinct bringing loose ends together when the time was right. So Sam had been coasting on that usual trust that he and his brother had been riding on for years, which was probably three parts dumb and one part adaptive antianxiety technique.

Except his brother was otherwise engaged.

Adonis was brilliant and had brought together their network like neither he nor Dean could have done alone. He was nice, he made Dean nicer, he had a good sense of humor. The Greek and Dean spent a lot of time behind closed doors, so that aspect must be going well. Sam felt bad for thinking it, but the guy was kind of too good to be true. Not like Dean should be with some basket case, male or female, but Adonis was so awesome he almost glowed with it. If Sam was remotely into guys he could imagine himself following around their guest like a moth to a light bulb. The guy never doubted himself. That was the real attraction, beyond his physical presentation. For someone like Dean, who constantly doubted himself, it was irresistible. And maybe a little distracting.

One good thing was that the couple spent hours listening to the transmissions shooting around the globe on Angel Radio. Together they'd narrowed down the likely spots for military maneuvers from the psalms that were about the only thing to be heard since Heaven had tamped down on the airwaves. For a couple of months they'd been too nervous to use the couple of emergency angel contacts Balthazar had left them with, but their weapons request had gone through without a hitch.

Sam knew his brother too well to even need to ask if he'd gotten any word about Cas from the angel who delivered the swords. Dean was quiet about it, and that spoke volumes for his younger brother. All the more reason to be happy Adonis had fallen into their laps, and Dean's lap in particular.

Sam shook himself and shrugged at White Crow's gesture pointing where he'd missed a spot where he was lining up colored stones in a pattern. "His heart's not in it," he said in Navajo.

"As long as he has a heart, your brother will live," the spirit said.

Sometimes Sam wished he'd been paired with someone a little more personable.

* * *

"Just do it already," the Dean trapped in Heaven said through gritted teeth. "I'm only one person's bitch and I think he'd understand my making an exception in this case."

The angel before him hesitated.

"Didn't you say that that dick Michael finally got himself psyched up and is on his way to mark me? I'd rather it be you than him, so get a move on," the stranded hunter demanded.

"I was just thinking we should make this convincing."

"You have a sense of humor after all! Okay, put your leg like this—no, let me—yes, like that. Okay, now what?"

"I believe you're supposed to say yes," Remiel said drily, feeling as undignified as he'd ever felt in the arms of this human.

"I hope I don't regret this—yes," stammered the hunter.

After a moment he said, "That was all? That felt like getting a Tetanus shot."

"I can't empathize with that experience but it sounds dull enough to be appropriate," the angel said.

"Did it work?"

"Oh, yes, they felt it clear across Heaven. Back into place now, they're coming."

They arranged their bodies.

"Remiel!" Michael and Zachariah burst into the room. "How dare you foil my plan to ride into the apocalypse in style?"

"Guess you'll have to find another ride," Dean grinned. "Funny, Remy here had no trouble getting it up, but you've been working up to it for weeks."

Michael grimaced. His nervousness at bonding with the Winchester man and possibly contracting a soul in the process had made him the laughingstock of Heaven.

"You just cockblocked an archangel," Zachariah put in. "Neither of you is going anywhere. Remy, I'm surprised at you. Is he really that good?" he asked eagerly.

"Fantastic," Remiel said without expression.

Dean's snigger was cut short as they were thrown into the stocks.

"We're not going to do that thing where you grow a soul, now are we?" Dean asked belatedly.

"Did you feel particularly moved by the experience?" Remiel asked.

"No," Dean replied.

"Neither did I, so I believe we are quite safe."

"Adonis is not going to believe this. Did you hear anything about him when you were out and about?"

"I know he is quite safe," Remiel said with his usual opaque delivery.

"Does he know I'm all right?"

"He has been thoroughly reassured," the diplomat said. It was perfectly easy to tell half-truths to humans for an angel skilled at eliding in front of other angels.

"Don't worry. They'll let us out soon enough. Everyone will be leaving for battle soon. The powers that be always remember me when it comes time to pick up the pieces." Remiel calculated that everyone would forget about his usurping the place of Michael soon enough—everyone except Zachariah, that toad, but he'd be out among the humans ogling up a storm while slashing away.

Remiel thought about Balthazar's instructions to take care of the extra Dean Winchester. There would be no place safer than the empty Heaven for the next few days. He thought of the news reaching the libertine Balthazar that the most irreproachable of angels had just bonded with a human. For mercenary means, but it didn't matter—the counterfeit tryst brought a slight smile to Remiel's lips, the first in about a millennium.

* * *

Balthazar and Etienne sat together in the hastily furnished interdimensional room they'd set up.

"Are you certain we can't pop down to Spain for just a little while?" Etienne asked in Spanish, stretching out on the woven carpet cushioned against nothingness. "I'd like to see the town where I was born."

"I have every reason to believe that we caused the world to tilt a few centimeters off its axis," Balthazar replied, tracing the man's cheekbones with his fingertips.

"We were rather amazing, weren't we?" Etienne agreed. "After so long dreaming about it, I was afraid it wouldn't live up to expectations. But I could never have dreamed this." He shut his eyes and regarded the growing wings and reopened them again.

"I am not exactly disappointed, either," Balthazar whispered. "You will understand soon, but I look completely different on the angelic plane. I'm sure of it. Outside of this little pocket we've created, Heaven would start to wonder exactly what turned the cynic into a romantic." He kissed in a trail down from Etienne's ear to his collarbone.

"I don't see exactly why our story is anyone else's concern, but I trust you when you say we must wait a little longer to walk down the street together. At the very least we have an audience of one." He pointed to Balthazar's body.

"It was very kind of Paul to agree to continue being my vessel with the changed circumstances, but I rather suspect he's gotten used to the high stakes thrills. He was a gambler when I found him, you know," Balthazar looked down at the body he was wearing, the same one he had used for a few years. "And very kind of you to facilitate letting me re-enter him after you had your way with me." He placed the other man's hand on his borrowed hip.

"I told you it would be no problem if I did the asking. I can be very convincing."

They didn't say a word for a few moments and then Balthazar came up for air. "After your little bilingual diatribe you had me convinced that I was—what were your words—"more spineless than a worm, and a heartless eunuch, and not worthy to inhabit your little finger, much less other more coveted regions." He tackled Etienne to the ground and felt the other's growing strength resisting him.

"Perhaps I was wrong on a few details," Etienne's hands were taking note of one in particular. "But I was right on all the important respects."

"That you were," Balthazar breathed. "You are absolutely right." He allowed himself to get carried away while there was still time to get to know this man who was rapidly becoming something more than a man.

When they were done, they held each other.

"Yes, I hope so," Etienne murmured into his ear.

"You're getting rather good at that," Balthazar replied. "I also hope that we continue to hold each other this tightly, that my arms never forget how fortunate they are to have you close."

"Yes, I hope so," Etienne said again.

This time Balthazar had been unable to keep a flicker of worry about the next day's battle from flashing through his mind. "We need to survive one more thing first, but at least this time we will be fighting together," had been the thought.


	21. Chapter 21

Castiel looked up from his writing, sensing a change in his environment.

There was no guard at his door to stop him, so he examined the room where the other Nephilim had been kept. It was empty.

He emerged from the prison wing that had been his home for the last several months into a Heaven that was being manned by only a skeletal crew of angels.

The fight had begun. That much he'd expected. But Cas was confused by his status as the only prisoner other than the counterfeit Dean and Remiel—he and the other changed ones knew that they had transformed to such an extent that their old vessels were unusable, and they sensed no other new possibilities suitable for jamming an extra soul into. They'd discussed it many times since the scrutiny on them had diminished.

Effectively stuck in a Heaven that saw them as oddities, the six ensouled angels had been resigned to sit out the apocalypse in which their comrades in the Cause had taken over leadership.

How had they found suitable vessels? And why hadn't they taken Cas with them?

The soldier's training took over, as it had during previous battles. He didn't have the luxury to wonder and doubt. He had a role to play yet, Castiel thought, and his virtues smoothed over the churning of his soul.

He stepped up to one of the lookout points in heaven, where it was easiest to see what was going on there on Earth. Only designated angels were allowed access to these windows, and the guardians of the portal stepped up to block his path.

"I have a safe conduct from the Angel Raphael," Castiel said, brandishing the blank tablets he'd brought with him. "How can I very well keep the prophets motivating the humans if I can't see what's happening?"

The guards stepped back, evidently distracted by the gravity of the occasion and the fact that they had so much more to monitor than usual.

Castiel saw the masses of humans assembled in the peaks of the Bolivian mountains, the throngs of angels waiting invisibly for the instructions to attack, and imagined the demon hordes doing the same. He assumed that the members of the resistance had some way to identify each other, but he was not privy to that information. He couldn't even pick out the humans he knew best from the crowd.

His soul murmured darkly at him. Months ago he could discern his lover's whereabouts anywhere on earth. Dean had shown out brightly at him, and something in Castiel never failed to echo with hope. It must be their long separation, and his will to not even think about Dean lest Heaven's instruments trace their link to his mate. That must be why the angel couldn't feel his beloved anymore. A shadow had fallen where there was once a pure light, and Castiel's many psalms had been written by a heart calling out to a love that remained silent.

He thought back to the Dean who emerged from the ground a new man. The resurrected Dean grew straight and strong because he knew he must. Cas couldn't wait to see Dean's new birth as a Nephilim. What his virtues were like, if they spun in the same way his did. Castiel actually knew some jokes in Enochian. They would be able to share that again.

The Cause had been carrying out their plans with little input from him. They felt he had changed sides, with how vehemently he was rounding up the humans under Raphael's instructions. No matter. It was not the first time that Castiel had been marginalized by his brethren. He didn't need to explain himself. A soldier does what needs to be done. Some other order of angel takes care of the whys and wherefores.

They said his true mate was fine, and that's all he needed to know. Cas had faith. He chuckled thinking of his characterization of Grace as Tinkerbell. Grace had wafted through in that form once or twice but not said anything to anyone. Castiel took it as a sign that what was happening was going to happen that way.

All Castiel knew was that he was going to make sure Dean survived whatever small amount of fighting the Cause was not able to prevent. Raphael had been disappointed that the counterfeit Dean did not live up to their hopes and experimentations, but the lead angel seemed to have found the presence of two supposed lovers a fascinating sociological experiment to have around. Cas was not sure whether this amusement was enough to lift the Purgatory banishment on all the human mates of the Nephilim, however, and would never consent to his beloved being relegated to such a lawless afterlife.

It was strange how hard it was to keep himself from dwelling on dangers and worries. Before Cas could never understand why humans bothered themselves so over things that hadn't happened. Thank goodness we angels aren't made that way, he'd thought many times. We would be diverted from the true path by vain imaginings.

It was difficult to focus with his new soul, but Castiel believed he'd already proved that a warrior with a soul could accomplish much. He fingered it like an instrument, this longing that was drawing him to Dean. Where was he? Some carefully hidden place in him was delirious, thinking he saw his lover's face peeping out from the crowds below. Not the false face that had been tormenting him recently, but his real face, the features a fluid miracle. Hello, yes, he said to a set of shoulders, to a hand, a foot, from the window. Yes it is me, Dean, Let's leave this conflict that is not ours. Let's show them how it's done. He couldn't feel Dean yet, but he was sure he would soon.

* * *

"Are they going to show up already?" Darla asked, frowning onscreen from her hideout at Bobby's place.

"They're here, I can see them, but even your fancy camera equipment can't see on the other plane," Dean said, trying to pass off his nervousness.

"How many of them are there?" Bobby asked for the hundredth time.

"A lot," Dean said. More angels in one place than he'd ever seen, that was for sure. He almost wished he couldn't see all of the muscle heaven had assembled for this fight. Dean didn't feel scared. Something this big, all his training as a fighter had kicked in a couple weeks ago when he and the Five began ferrying people from other continents to the signaled spot in South America. Even the newspapers had gotten wind of this cult gathering in Bolivia, and there were people on the 6 o'clock news theorizing it was like a modern day Woodstock or cautioning that the scene was going to turn ugly because none of the pilgrims seemed to agree on what had drawn them there.

"How many of the angels are marked for the resistance?" Adonis whispered in his ear in Greek. They'd had a lot of time to devote to his lessons, Dean thought, leaning into the hand that rubbed his shoulders. He had no reason to be jealous of the Five going off to rejoin their mates in some secret spot. He had this. He had someone.

"I'd say about a quarter or more, but it's hard to tell. There's more of them than I can see," Dean said, running his hand through his lover's hair. "Remember, I'm not quite as tall as a regular angel on that plane, so it's hard to get the lay of the land."

"Any word from Balthazar?" Bobby called out, fiddling with the display screen from within their tent. Darla and the other geeks associated with the Cause had them hooked up, Dean had to admit. Solar batteries powering wireless camera feeds from all over the likely battle spots, sending real-time feedback through the server at Bobby's place and across the world to sympathizers ready to add their own spells to the ones loosed by the members of the Cause on-site.

"Nope. I hear fourth-hand he's out there somewhere, but that's it." Dean fingered Crowley's severed head, cloaked by a spell at the moment, which they were supposed to unveil any minute for the benefit of the demons. Bobby had been right months ago when he observed that without Balthazar they'd be hurting. Dean missed knowing that there was an angel he could trust. Now he looked invisibly at throngs of angels and they were a little unnerving. Who knows what motivated them to begin the process of destroying the world, starting today?

One thing Dean could see clearly was how many resistance fighters were in Bolivia. All treated with the silver incense burner, they stood out clearly to both his human and angelic eyes, dotting the multitudes with spots of hope.

"Any minute now, simmer down," he said in Mongolian to the Khan. The ghostly general had taken up more or less full-time residence in him a couple days ago, and Dean was dealing with a much more bossy inhabiting spirit than he was accustomed to.

"Your Mongol wants to start the fight?" Adonis asked him. "My spirit is being a little annoying as well." He stroked Dean's arm. "If I didn't know better I'd say she suddenly didn't approve of you."

"Look," Bobby beckoned them into the tent. "That dark spot. It's Hell making the first move." He got on the phone with Sam where he was staked out on the other side of town with their Native garrison. "They're coming at you from the Northeast, Sam, a big wave of possessed folk."

"Any sign of Lucifer?"

"Not yet."

Dean stepped out in front of his troops, with Adonis close behind. He called one of the other hunters and the rest of his garrison was patched in so they could hear each other over the growing din. "All right people, listen up!" he yelled. "Sam's doing his thing to trip up the demons, but some are sure to head this way. Keep your cool and save your strength for the angels. You'll hear the code word when the Five and I show ourselves. That's when the real fight will begin."

Even to the uninitiated observer, the hunters stood out pretty clearly from the rest of the crowd because they weren't praying or singing or calling on any number of prophets that seemed to have sprung up recently. Together, Dean and the Khan led their warriors out of the way from this deluge of crazy people crying for their Lord.

"The angels can't content themselves with fighting over vessels for long," Adonis hissed in his ear. They watched a cloud of dark smoke try to wrestle its way into a woman who alternately spewed obscenities and recited psalms. "They're going to show themselves to the human eye any moment and people are going to flip out."

Dean relayed the warning to his hunters and asked Bobby for a sense of how things looked from their cameras' birds-eye view.

Was this the way you're supposed to feel when something you've prepared a long time for actually happens? some part of his mind kept asking. Because Dean felt nothing. He was going through the motions, yanked in the direction he was needed by the Khan. The general was taking over his faculty of speech at times, encouraging his fighters to hold firm until he gave the signal, reassuring them that everything was going according to plan while mass possession rippled over the land. Surges of magic rained down upon these unfortunate people, called down on the spot by their global Cause network.

"How you holding up, Sammie?" Dean said in the Navajo that came naturally between him and his brother now. "Any sign from our secret weapon?"

That was how they referred to the other gods they'd gotten so familiar with, the Navajo spirits they were banking on showing up, though Cecil refused to commit either way.

"Haven't seen any of those guys, yet, but we're getting plenty of action," Sam hollered. "I've got to keep my circle secure, man, so I can't talk, but my people are holding up pretty well."

"Keep it up, Naʼídígishí," Dean said to Little Brother. A couple of his people had had to take out some possessed folks who were streaking around like banshees, and he spent the next few minutes mouthing the words the Khan used to stave off everyone's anxiousness to begin fighting in earnest.

"Aaaah!"

The sound rose up out of every non-possessed human's throat. It was a recognition of something each person, no matter what their background, instinctually knew to be true:

Giants walked the land.

Actually, the angels swooped over the crowds as the enormous, light-filled, winged creatures they were.

"Can you see that?" Dean asked Adonis.

"I saw it all right. That's what you look like?" the Greek asked, his face wearing the awe that had spread quickly across the crowd.

"A little smaller, but yeah." Dean watched the possessed people set themselves upon the vessel attached to one of the angels.

"_And He rode upon a cherub, and flew; He flew upon the wings of the wind,_" Adonis was saying. "Except it looks like scripture got it backwards, and the angel rides on the human."

"There's Lucifer, coming out of the west," Dean called. The fallen angel had surprised him by not showing himself earlier. But there he was. His evident discomfort in his human vessel, and his squeamishness about being pressed in by the human throngs, made him move gingerly, staying to the angelic plane, mostly.

The angels were appearing all over the landscape and Dean could feel the warrior inside him preparing for the charge, when the human throng gave a sudden shift. Dean could clearly see the confusion in a couple of angel's faces. This was not part of their plan, so he assumed it was something the angelic resistance was doing.

"What's happening?" he heard Bobby's voice.

"Dunno. Everybody hold your position. I repeat. Hold your position." Dean was trying to home in on the Enochian the angels were speaking, but there was a dizzying number of voices.

"_He sent from above, He took me; He drew me out of many waters_," Adonis grabbed I arm. "That's what they're saying, '_He also brought me out into a broad place; He delivered me because He delighted in me_.'"

"What language is that?" Dean asked as a bunch of people almost flattened them running by. "No way all these people speak English."

"I heard it in Greek, actually, but this sort of thing has been documented before in ancient times, " Adonis was saying excitedly. "Each person hears the prophesy in the language they know best."

They watched a huge sector of the crowd move as one, speak as one, along with equally confused demons and angels. They all must be thinking the same thing—the chances of controlling that many people are practically nil, even for a trained army, and these were just poor souls who'd drunk the wrong Kool-aid.

Dean felt the Khan faltering within him. This religious stuff was way outside the comfort zone of both the living and ghost warrior.

"What do we do?" he asked Adonis. This must be the reason he had his own personal Bible expert on hand. What was up with the Five, that he hadn't heard from them yet? This was a good time for the big reveal, while the angels were confused.

"We've had a couple of the troops join the holy rollers," one of Dean's hunters shouted through the phone.

Adonis grabbed his hand and Dean felt the Khan rearing up, impatient, from within. "The way these god-contests usually work is that people's worldviews are at stake. What began this fight was something beautiful—you and the others experiencing love instead of a dry hierarchy. We stand for a gentler vision of the universe, wouldn't you say?"

He took the phone from Dean and began reciting,

"_I have loved the habitation of Your house,_

_And the place where Your glory dwells,"_

Adonis smirked a little as his hand caressed his lover. He continued:

"_How lovely is Your tabernacle,_

_O Lord of hosts!"_

The ruckus from a thousand voices and trampling feet fell away. There was only Dean and Adonis, pressing close together, the truth of what they had found together shining out of their joined bodies.

"_My soul longs, yes, even faints_

_For the courts of the Lord;_

_My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God."_

Dean was so lost in the moment he didn't hear any of the voices squawking at him on the line that the crowd was descending upon his location. He didn't see the angels on their plane staring right at him with a cold kind of wonder.

He only came back to his full awareness when the hands ripped Adonis from his arms.

"Wait! What are you doing?" Dean cried, but Genghis Khan wrested his body and mind from the sudden anguish saturating him, and he was pushed back into his role as the general of the Cause.

For the next unknown series of minutes, Dean was not in control of any part of himself. If he was, he would have streaked after his lover and beaten in the skull of every person who dared separate them. It was a good thing the Mongolian in charge had come back from the dead with this very battle in mind, because the Khan was slashing away at all the enraged cult followers who were trying to rip his throat out, paying them very little attention because the real battle was beginning with the angels.

"_My __heart__ is steadfast, O God, my __heart__ is steadfast; I will sing and give praise._

_My heart was hot within me; While I was musing, the fire burned. __Then__ I spoke with my tongue_," some part of Dean's mind heard the crowds say.

"_For their __heart__ was not steadfast with Him, Nor were they faithful in His covenant._

_He bowed the heavens also, and came down With darkness under His feet," _the angry cult was saying.

* * *

From his post at a window of Heaven, Castiel's stylus flew across another tablet. How could Dean have betrayed him in this way? He must have bonded with another, that was the only explanation for why the sympathy between them had been broken.

He could sense the guards moving towards him from where they had been patrolling elsewhere in Heaven.

"_I hate the double-minded, But I love Your law_.**"**

"_I have wounded them, So that they could not rise; They have fallen under my feet._

_For You have armed me with strength for the battle; You have subdued under me those who rose up against me._

_Then I beat them as fine as the dust before the wind; I cast them out like dirt in the streets._

_You have delivered me from the strivings of the people; You have made me the head of the nations; A people I have not known shall serve me._

_As soon as they hear of me they obey me; The foreigners submit to me."_

Castiel could see that strange man, that interloper who had lately been pawing at his mate's flesh, this unholy one was being borne aloft on the arms of the people who had become accustomed to heeding his words over the past several months.

His stylus was poised as he considered what type of death was most fitting for this filthy creature who had sullied his love, when the guards ripped the tablet from his hands and he was thrust into a dungeon.

"Oooohhh!"

Everyone stopped. Demons, humans, angels. Everyone looked as one to the magnificent creatures that had suddenly appeared, six in all.

The Nephilim.

Even the Khan was thrown off his stride. Two souls, two angelic forms, joined together made for a profusion of wings and light that no one from any realm was able to ignore.

Dean easily picked out the Five joined with their mates; Lester, Rosa, Gerald, Mike and Peter were the same faces he had gotten to know so well, but they were entirely different as part of this strange and lovely life form they made when attached to their other halves. They swooped through the sky and over the masses, letting the full impact of their newness hit everyone.

But Dean couldn't take his eyes off the brightest and most unexpected appearance: that of Balthazar, with a man he'd never seen before. He almost didn't recognize Balthazar because he looked so good. And for some reason Balthazar didn't acknowledge his ritual greeting with any more than a slight nod in his direction.

Together, Balthazar and his mate approached the angelic armies. They raised their hands, and chaos broke out between the angels loyal to Raphael versus the ones loyal to the resistance. Dean saw several individuals switch sides rather suddenly, and then he was able to pick out Raphael's face. He thought of the image Castiel had transmitted to him long ago, of Rapahel as a petulant toddler in a party hat, and he almost smiled.

Then the Khan overwhelmed his awareness with everything he needed to do to stay alive. He brandished his sword against the loyalist angels, with some of the demonic hordes falling into line behind him, each glimmering with the sign that they were part of the Cause.

The rest of the demons were throwing in their lot with one or another of the factions form the Heavenly Host, obviously sensing that a regime change might be imminent.

Dean slashed and shouted and did a little swooping of his own now that the cat was out of the bag. He saw for the first time how many tens of thousands of people had been lured to this spot. For what? They didn't even know what they were fighting for.

He wasn't sure either. If Genghis Khan weren't there moving his limbs, Dean would've hung back and tried to figure out why he was there, himself.

He felt oddly lonely as the only Nephilim without a mate. Without Adonis by his side, as he had been constantly in recent weeks, Dean felt the loss of Cas stab at him with a vengeance. He should have been one of the magnificent ones, the multi-winged beasts that were the dawn of a new age. Instead he felt small, as he was in comparison to the real angels. The Khan goaded him to take another reconnaissance flight over the battlefield. It was impossible to tell who was winning, if winning was even what they were playing at. But he was certainly not looking at the worst-case scenarios he'd played out with Sam and Bobby on their darker evenings.

"How did you get out?" Zachariah was suddenly before him. "You look—not like yourself," the angel said, looking him up and down with that rude gaze of his.

"I kind of like being a redhead," Dean said innocently, as if his bodily changes were the most notable. "Oh, you mean the whole angelic body thing." It was a petty conversation to be having at this moment, but the Khan appeared to be indulging him. "Not too bad for a piece of ass," he said, giving a lazy thrust to his sword. Let that teach the angels who thought people were pieces of meat.

"A piece of ass that almost turned the course of battle," Zachariah said, giving a perfunctory block with his weapon.

"What do you mean?" Dean asked. "You're still harping on me cockblocking an archangel?"

"I mean that I don't know what you're playing at, messing around with all and sundry, but Cas isn't taking it lying down," Zachariah gave him one of his lascivious smiles. "You should know him by now—our Castiel is loyal to a fault and expects the same in return. However you got out of that dungeon, I suggest you stay gone, because he's going to find a way to exact vengeance."

Dean watched the Khan perform the movements required of him for swordplay while his mind kept getting stuck on the way to arriving at a thought. "Cas. You mean, Cas, he's—"

"Your enemy for all eternity, most likely," Zachariah grinned. "I thought he was too far gone to understand the gossip going around heaven about his shenanigans with Remiel, but I think it's safe to say he knows and it's over, friend."

The angel dropped his sword suddenly and the Khan was moving Dean's arm to a brutal thrust when he heard the uproar going on behind him.

"What in God's name have your little ragtag bunch done?" Zachariah gasped.

Changing Woman was tilting her head at Zachariah. "Are you coming?" she said to Dean in Navajo.

In a moment they had joined Sam and all the deities they had encountered so many times before in their battles that had never managed to cross over into this one. Spider Woman, the Sun, Coyote and all the rest appeared resplendent before the battle-weary troops. Now, every human, demon and angel stood very still and watched. Dean wondered briefly if his Native friends felt remotely clued in, because in everyone else's books they were completely off script.

Dean was so thrown by the news that Castiel was still alive that he could feel the warrior inside of him cursing up a storm in Mongolian at the shock that was weighting his limbs.

Sam was another story entirely. "Here are my trophies," he said in Navajo to the assembled spirits. He had quite an impressive assemblage of bits of angel wing and cloths smeared with demon blood.

"You have fought well, my son," said Changing Woman.

Everyone looked at Dean. "I've been a little busy fighting. I didn't keep any trophies," Dean hissed to his brother.

"What did you do with Crowley's head?"

"Oh, I forgot about that. Hold on a minute." Dean used his angelic abilities to streak back to the tent and retrieve the head. "Here is my trophy," he said, placing it before his father the Sun, who was a man dressed in brilliant white buckskin.

The Sun accepted the offering and turned back to Sam. "Which are the ones who will be going to the Next World, Naayééʼ Neizghání,?"

Sam considered for only a moment. "We should consult with the Holy Ones," he said, and called for Balthazar to join them.

Dean's head was moving slowly. They'd rehearsed this a hundred times. He was Naayééʼ Neizghání, Older Brother. Why was everybody focusing on Sam?

He watched Balthazar approach with the strange man who was his mate, and the two gave a respectful bow to the Navajo spirits before them. "You're asking for volunteers to go to another plane? I thought your myths worked like ours, in that humans messed things up and were sent out of one plane and into another," Baltahazar said as if he spoke Navajo every day.

"Sometimes, but in others of our myths, the troublemakers are taken to a new place so that everyone else can live in peace," Changing Woman said.

"In that case, Lucifer and Raphael would be the obvious choice, what do you think?" Balthazar looked at Dean full-face for the first time that day.

"Let any of their die-hard minions volunteer to go with them, if they're going to just start up with the same bullshit when their leaders ascend," the Khan said in Mongolian through Dean's mouth, and everyone laughed.

Dean wrested control of his own mouth back from his inhabiting spirit. "Where's Adonis? What's happened to him?" he demanded.

Sam and Balthazar exchanged a look laden with meaning over his head. "I was hoping one of our visitors could escort him home," the angel said gently but firmly.

From that point forward, for the rest of that long, tumultuous day, Dean's will was completely subsumed by the Khan's. The emotional mess he was on the inside was closed over by the Mongolian's iron will. While Raphael and Lucifer—both completely off their stride—were brought before the visiting Navajo gods, Sam told him where Adonis had been hidden from the crowds and the Khan forced him to retrieve his lover without a word.

"What's happening?" a beaten and dirty Adonis asked him over and over, but the Khan didn't slacken his grip on the reins enough for him to answer.

"Will you see that he gets home safely?" Sam asked of Changing Woman. "We're going to have to ask you to make another trip for the other one."

"What other one?" Adonis protested. "There's someone else from my timeline here?"

"Your Dean is safe," Balthazar said. "We'll deliver him shortly, but it's important that you leave now. Your timeline needs you."

"You're going to keep getting hit with the hand of fate as long as you're here, Adonis. Your fate wants you somewhere else," Sam chimed in.

Dean wasn't even allowed to hug Adonis goodbye before Changing Woman scooped him up in her arms to lead him back to his home reality. At the same time, Raphael and Lucifer (with a conspicuous lack of hangers-on) were led by Coyote to their mutual exile.

"What do you think their new reality will be like?" Sam asked him.

But the Khan didn't trust to let Dean answer. It's just as well; he would have probably started bawling and disgraced their Navajo friends.

The battle over, Dean hoped he could have a minute to himself to process all the revelations of the day, but Balthazar steered him away from earth.

"I'm afraid you have one more prophesy to fulfill," he said. "You're the one who's supposed to storm heaven, and your double has fulfilled his part admirably, from what I hear, so set him free why don't you?"

Dean's heart had been stretched and stomped on several times that day, but maybe the most difficult thing was seeing Balthazar's deep affection for this man Dean had never heard of, as the strange man said goodbye to him in some other language.

"We won't be long," he understood Balthazar to say.

The angel led Dean to the section of heaven where his double was being held. "Damn, I thought you'd never get here," the Other Dean said. "Where's Adonis? Is he okay?"

"He's there waiting for you," a guilt-stricken Dean replied. He had to endure the other man's questions about his quasi-angelic state as he flew the two of them down to earth, where Changing Woman was waiting for them in Bolivia.

"I'm really sorry—" Dean began, not knowing how to tell his double he'd been in a relationship with his boyfriend.

"Don't worry about it. I actually learned a lot while I was locked up in heaven, stuff that may make the difference for my apocalypse."

From the Visiting Dean's blithe manner, he could tell his double had no idea what had been going on while they thought he was dead.

"Good luck," was all he could think of to say.

The Khan forced him back to their tent, and the last thing Dean remembered was Sam saying, "Hey there, Little Brother," before he passed out.


	22. Chapter 22

Dean let himself out of the apartment he was renting in the East Village and allowed his feet to decide the destination for the evening, as he had done since coming to New York two months ago.

He let the people around him determine the speed with which he moved. The same way he'd let the clerk in the clothing store choose his outfit. Dean had even chosen what he was wearing by sticking his hand in his closet with his eyes closed. He didn't want to be responsible for which of his selves he was tonight. Everything was to be left up to a wisdom that existed somewhere else, but certainly not in him.

The ex-hunter's steps were light. He'd given a lot of thought to the random things in life, ever since he'd been financing his new lives with the winnings from America's finest gambling establishments—all the non-Native-run ones he could pick off with his new senses, that is. If he could live off of chance, he could live with all the chance things he couldn't control, he told himself every day.

Dean figured he was headed towards the Upper West Side and one of its more upper-crust bars, in keeping with the expensively casual chocolate brown blazer the store clerk said set off his red hair. He hailed a taxi and had an enjoyable conversation with the Bengali driver about the photo of his wife and kids he had tacked up inside the cab.

"You married?" the driver asked.

"No, but tonight's as good a night as any to meet that special someone," Dean said.

They chatted a bit about the best night spots in the Upper West Side and the driver let him off in the Seventies. "Best of luck to you my friend," the man said. "Everyone has someone out there waiting for them."

Dean handed him a big tip. "Thanks, man. I appreciate that." New Yorkers were proving themselves much nicer than he remembered on previous trips. Maybe because he could afford to tip better.

He entered a bar that would have struck him as stuck up and overpriced a short time ago, perching with utmost naturalness on a stool and ordering one of the pricey brands of scotch he'd learned by name.

"When does the show get out?" Dean asked the bartender. There was always some show at Lincoln Center on Saturdays, and then a bunch of people searching for something to wash down all that culture hit the streets.

"Probably pretty soon," the man said, setting his drink in front of him. "Stretch out while you can, it'll be elbow to elbow soon enough."

Dean sipped his drink and surveyed the other patrons. They tended towards the fifty-plus, as did the neighborhood, and Dean found himself walking to the table where he might find a little random salvation.

"Mind if I join you?" he asked the woman in her early sixties, with a patterned scarf knotted at her neck and discreet jewelry, the sort of thing that denoted real class as he was beginning to discover it in the more moneyed circles in which he occasionally traveled nowadays.

She laughed a warm laugh. "Well, I don't see why not, young man. I've reached the point in life where being stood up by a gentleman makes one's thoughts immediately alternate between him having broken hip and the onset of dementia. I'd rather chase away my catastrophic ideas about my friend with some good company." She stretched out her hand. "I'm Paulette,"

"Dean," he said, shaking her hand and sitting down. While he listened to her amusing stories about having an active social life at her age, he observed her on the angelic plane. She was definitely one of them.

Ever since he showed up in the city with no plans except to quietly fall apart in a little privacy, Dean had been finding these people. Or maybe they found him. Taxi drivers, doormen, waitresses, upper-class women and men of a certain age like the lady in front of him, museum attendants, baristas, drag queens, hipsters, scenester boys from the gay districts, once a nun, another time a Jehovah's Witness.

Each of these people had delivered a message of hope to his soul that had been gobsmacked with its own insignificance.

Wherever he went, Dean ordered his alcohol or his juice and sipped it until someone sat down next to him or he ended up next to them. The conversation might center on relatively innocuous but pleasant subjects, but more often than not, he would end up spitting out that night's version of his messed up fate with tears falling into his drink.

Of course, he couldn't tell people the literal truth: "I fell in love with my double's boyfriend and sleepwalked through the apocalypse I was born to fight. The angel I was bonded to won't talk to me and regardless, I screwed things up so bad between us we're like strangers to each other. The inhabiting spirit was so mad at what a sniveling fool he had to drag around that he, the greatest fighter in history, Genghis Khan, barely muttered a goodbye before leaving me with the only thing that rubbed off from him-his hair and eye color. My little brother has now assumed big brother functions and I'm so glad to leave all the responsibilities to him—he's proved himself to be the real leader. And I haven't the slightest idea who I'm supposed to be now that I broke the heart of someone who deserved better."

The whole scene in Bolivia had been the subject of some speculation in the media's short attention span. But soon there were other subjects that eclipsed the casualties who were written off as victims of trampling rather than being mowed down by Heaven's and Hell's armies. Even Dean had to admit that the loss of life was miraculously low.

No thanks to him.

When he rarely slept he woke up in a panic, seeing the crowds turning on Adonis, kicking, spitting, punching.

Balthazar spoke little when Dean went to rescue his other self in Heaven, but he did gently convey the information that Cas had been controlling Heaven's human crazies.

For those few minutes in which Cas' furious heartbreak had been expressed in the savage crowds, how many were injured? How many trampled?

Those unknown people, in addition to Adonis' broken bones, weighed on Dean's conscience. He had done those things—by falling in love when he shouldn't have, he'd hurt two great guys. He needed no more proof than that that he deserved neither of them.

So instead of voicing this secret pain, Dean let his mouth spin other tales that were the reason for his current existential quandary. Sometimes he had lost a girlfriend, sometimes a boyfriend. Most nights it was because of dumb decisions on his part, sometimes his mouth gave voice to a little mercy, and Dean heard himself telling the person in the dive bar in Brooklyn that if he had chosen badly, it was because someone else put impossible choices in his path.

"I never would have met Guy #2 if Guy #1 didn't throw me out of his world headfirst," Dean said with tears in his eyes to the gay couple in their mid twenties who were his benefactors one evening.

They bought him another drink. "We didn't really take to each other when we first met in freshman year of college," one of the young men said.

"Life is a process of constantly reworking the equations that seemed like they only had one answer before," the other man said. He was a broker of some sort, Dean vaguely remembered. "One day I realized I'd made a big mistake writing off Jules, and he's now having the time of his life making me pay for it."

The couple laughed easily and got up to go. "Do the math again and see if you missed something the first time," the broker said, and Dean was left in a noisy gay bar to wait for his new instinct to pick out the person who would impart the next piece of truth.

He didn't know how he found the good listeners. These were bars, after all, and everyone else was hooking up or talking about who else was hooking up, but somehow Dean was able to locate someone with an open heart. He tried to see that as a good sign—maybe he'd be able to find out where he belonged soon, if his instincts were able to hone in on something good

At the very least, he experienced the beauty of New York, where he could tell anyone that he'd been in love with two guys at once, that he didn't do either guy a bit of good, and now he had no idea what to do next. People listened, gave him tissues, he got more phone numbers that he would never call, and learned to let go and trust people a little for what was probably the first time. In these couple of months, Dean learned to float on the good graces of strangers, and he hoped one day to learn to swim among them with sure strokes.

As long as Dean kept up with his agreement to text Bobby and Sam once a week each, they agreed to give him this time to have a crisis and hopefully come out the other side. Darla was the one he heard the most from. She sent him horribly misspelled text messages and goofy pictures from the internet almost every day. "Somebody has to make sure you're not going mental," was her blunt reasoning for checking in so frequently. Dean sent her pictures of the city with appropriately rude notes and felt his duty to his past was discharged.

People from the Cause had tried to rope him into their schemes for shoring up defenses against a Hell that was currently without clear leadership, but that part of Dean had died. He was sure of it. The last bit of himself that pretended to know what he was doing expired the day Heaven sent him an official message—a couple of days after the big fight.

The angel appeared at Dean's bedside where he was curled up in the fetal position on a bed at Bobby's, and made the formal announcement. The Heavenly ban on the human halves of the Nephilim couples was lifted. He could come by any time he liked, as long as he gave ample notice so that Castiel could arrange to be in some other sector of Heaven from his ex-beloved.

"I'd rather find my own way from here on out, thanks," he'd told the Heavenly emissary, and that was the last he'd heard from his cousins up in the sky.

Dean saw real angels occasionally in the city, and they were friendly enough, but he felt like a malformed thing now in comparison. This angelic form of his was the direct result of his relationship with Cas. And now he had no one to share it with, no one to help him make sense of it all. Dean hadn't yet gone home with anyone from the bars—he wasn't sure he should if he ever would get the nerve. He was an atom bomb walking around in a cashmere blazer or a leather jacket, depending on the day. He wasn't sure it would do anyone any good for him to lose sight of the fact that he was an extraneous sun fallen out of the sky and wandering around the streets of New York. A lost power, looking for a shoulder to cry on.

Dean had thought about renting an apartment in the building where the Other Dean and Adonis lived in their reality, but he was of simpler tastes. That didn't stop him from going by the building occasionally so he could entertain forbidden thoughts about Adonis.

What was his old lover doing? Were he and his Dean able to fulfill their roles in their apocalypse and save their Sam? Was his counterpart able to forgive Adonis for messing around behind his (presumed dead) back?

Adonis had said he had some ideas for appealing to the angels' more caring virtues, but Dean would never have thought that a public, scriptural declaration of love could have had such consequences: the Greek nearly being beaten to death by a mob, and Cas swearing off his traitorous lover for good.

"I'm sorry, go back to that last part again," Paulette said, her color rising from the last glass of wine. "I keep getting these two men mixed up. The first one, Carlos, and the second one, Adam, they're so much alike."

Dean inwardly winced at the pseudonyms he felt were prudent to use. "They're not a thing alike. Carlos is a very, very powerful guy. Adam is more an intellectual. And they're from completely different cultures." Not to mention life forms.

"Come now, I don't think you're the sort to care about status," the older woman laughed. "I could tell as soon as I saw your wallet." Dean raised his eyebrow. "It's a hunk of old leather that's been worn into a second skin and you'd never part with it. Was it your father's?"

"Yes, actually." Dean had sewn it up with dental floss a few times.

"In my experience, and I have had a little," she said conspiratorially, "The men who hang on to a wallet or an overcoat or a pair of shoes long after they should pitch them out are the best sort, because they care about character. Not a $400 Gucci accessory. It's easy to see, young man, that you liked each of these men because they were _good._ Better than you, or so you thought. I don't even think you've noticed the bartender sending calculating glances this way,"

Paulette twisted her lips archly towards the now-packed bar. "If you want my opinion, and obviously you do because I take it I'm not your type, it's easier for you to obsess about these two men, and your family, and this job you feel you didn't live up to expectations for, than it is for you to turn around in that chair and decide if the that man behind the bar appeals to you, and if so, what you want to do next."

Paulette gave a jaunty little wave and the bartender came over. "More of the same?" she asked Dean.

"Make this one a double," Dean muttered, looking anywhere but in the bartender's eyes.

"A stiff whisky for my friend, and another glass of wine for me," Paulette said, getting up from her chair. "I'm going to go powder my nose," she said significantly.

The bartender returned with their drinks. "It's nice of you to talk to her. Sometimes I have to take over babysitting duties when she gets too annoying to the other guests."

"I thought she got stood up?" Dean asked.

"Maybe twenty years ago. She's been coming to this place as long as anyone can remember. We all look out for her, get her a cab when she's not steady on her feet." He consulted his watch. "Which should be happening any minute now. How many do you reckon she's had tonight? She has a tab but I was a little distracted by her having a drinking buddy."

The bartender fluttered his eyelashes at Dean and the uncategorizable creature that he was tried very hard to cram some of himself into that flirtatious gaze.

It was like what Balthazar explained to him not very long ago—angels are bigger than their manifestation on the earthly plane, and so they had to compromise about which "fingers" they jammed into that limited human "glove."

"I'm Randy, by the way," the man said, making a sign to the waitress to watch the bar as he pulled up a chair to their table. "And besides a savior to lonely old ladies, who are you?"

"I'm Dean." He shook the outstretched hand and saw the barman, who had at first struck him as merely tired, jaded and in need of sunlight, like so many people in the city, saw him as if for the first time.

Randy did have nice eyelashes. He looked vaguely Italian and his olive complexion looked much healthier now that he was emitting a friendly glow. "You don't seem very New York to me. New in town?"

"And you seem very New York," Dean laughed. "Yeah, a couple months. Trying to decide if it suits me." He registered the warm smile from the bartender as if he were personally laying out the welcome mat. "I like being able to blend in with the crowd."

Randy laughed. "You? Not by a long shot." Dean blushed and the other man followed the admiring gaze with "I get off at one. Swing back by if you want."

They both looked up as they heard an unsteady giggle. "Here you go, Paulette," Randy said, standing up and brandishing her bag. "Let's get you in a cab."

"Allow me," Dean said so he could examine the woman he'd been chatting with for two hours a little closer.

It couldn't be that the alcohol had caught up with her while she was in the bathroom. No one aged more than ten years in ten minutes.

Her makeup, clothing and jewelry, which had seemed so discreet, were still obviously expensive but now seemed garish. The hand that held her purse had an alcoholic's tremor that had probably been a fact of life for her for at least a decade. The weight that leaned on his arm was like a bird's.

Her hands emerged from the bag with a fistful of crumpled notes. "Never you mind, ma'am, you showed me a good time tonight," Dean waved her off, and pulled out his wallet while he hailed a taxi.

"I was right about you. That wallet's a museum piece," Paulette slurred.

As he helped her fold her stiff frame into the cab and he passed some bills to the driver, he looked at the old woman who had been his savior for a little while. "Thanks for the talk. It was exactly what I needed."

The years and neglect melted from her face in an instant, and the sophisticated woman was again before his eyes. "Remember, you're good already. You don't need to find someone else to make you good."

Dean withdrew the tendril of wing that had animated Paulette momentarily, as it had all evening without his being aware of it, and she was a wreck of a person again, screeching directions at the taxi driver as they pulled away.

He smoothed over his emotions with his Temperance virtue and walked back into the bar. "Can you cash me out, for both me and Paulette?" he asked Randy neutrally.

"Sure thing, Doll, but keep in mind the old lady's loaded."

Dean made a dismissive gesture and watched the barman ring up the tab with a mechanical air. Concentrating ever so slightly, he extended a warm current to the man, and he bloomed before his eyes.

"I do hope you drop by later. From what little I overheard you saying to Paulette, you're in need of a good time. Whatever your scene, I know where to go."

"Thanks, man," Dean said, adding a little extra juice to his smile to make up for the fact that he intended to never visit that street again. The barman's sharp intake of breath betrayed the irresistible draw of the angelic.

Dean took the subway home, trying to concentrate on keeping himself to himself. Still, there were enough people who started up conversations with him to get on his last nerve. He stopped by a different all-night corner store than usual so he wouldn't have to talk to someone he knew, but still, the dour-faced Korean man behind the counter made him talk for five minutes about the meaning of life.

He raced home and hastily put on his running clothes, his fallback plan when he needed to think. For anyone else it might have been a bad idea to run at night, but Dean was no ordinary person anymore.

He should have known.

What he thought was big, bad ol' New York City giving him the warm welcome his confused soul needed, was actually people telling him what he wanted to hear, reflecting his angelic energy back at him.

Dean's invisible angelic body flew behind him like a kite. He didn't belong here, he didn't belong anywhere. He had too many fingers now. He creeped himself out. The awful thought struck him that Adonis had been just as bewitched as everyone he'd met in New York so far, and he came to a halt, bending over, panting.

"Runner's cramp?" a passerby asked in a friendly tone.

Dean took off running again before he blurted out that it was more like an everything cramp. He was going to feel like that forever—drawing people into his orbit, a useless minor sun that lit people up only because they needed some kind of warmth so badly.

Resolving to become another one of New York's shut-ins, Dean returned to his apartment and wept at the coldness from being barred from the sun he once took refuge in.

* * *

"Brother, may I come in?"

"I suppose you've been sent by that liar Remiel, so there's not much I can do about it in my position, is there?" Castiel snapped. "Why should I come out when the new regime promises to be just as corrupt as the old one?"

Balthazar entered the room and closed the door behind him. "Remy is s very different than Raphael, brother, you should see the changes he's making. For one thing, he's been elected rather than winning the post by besting the others in battle."

"Humph," Cas said. "Most likely he told everyone what they wanted to hear and that's how he acquired the winning vote."

"If he'd told you about the situation with your Dean prematurely you would have been just as upset and Raphael and company would have been tipped off about the whole resistance scheme," Balthazar said patiently. Each of the other Nephilim had tried to explain the same thing, as did Remy, but Cas didn't want to hear it.

"With all of you paired ones running the council, I can't understand why you need a slippery creature such as Remiel anyway. You must admit you can never tell what he means when he talks."

"Stop itching that," Balthazar admonished his friend. "Remiel is a conscientious objector—apparently we'd all forgotten why he got all the menial tasks. Why half of heaven was relegated to subservience. He's very, very good at keeping the peace, and you must admit it's about time for that. It's amazing what we forget, Cas, but apparently it's all coming out in the wash with the dawn of a new age."

"I'll believe it when I see it," Castiel said, scratching at the place where his soul resided. They'd had to keep him restrained at first, once Cas' world fell apart and he started looking at his soul as an imposition from the faithless Dean, rather than something he'd attained. The soul was rubbed raw and he couldn't rest easy with it.

"Let me tell you a story," Balthazar said, settling on the floor in an effort to distract his friend. "I've been seeing a bit of Grace lately, as it finally lived up to its side of the bargain with Etienne—"

"Go back to your mate if you want to gloat at your good fortune," Castiel lashed out.

Balthazar winced. It was hard not to talk about his newfound happiness, but it was the last thing his old comrade needed to hear. "And Grace told me about something else that has been forgotten in our long memories. Did you know that you weren't the only one born with eight wings?"

Cas stopped itching at the subject of the difference that had always set him apart. "No, I thought I was the only one."

Balthazar smiled. "It seems that we're a little more than best mates. We're twins."

The captive angel glared at him stonily. "And it's turned out that I got the extra wings and you were the one who had the love story Heaven and Hell rearranged themselves for? Splendid."

"You and Dean played just as crucial a role," Balthazar said in exasperation. "And who knows what would have happened if you didn't shut yourself away in a huff when Dean stormed Heaven as prophesied."

"For someone who doesn't believe in anything, you and Grace are certainly thick as thieves these days. I could tell it a thing or two you've said about it over the years, but I, for one, am not able to call it to my cell."

"Oh give it up, Cas, you were always so melodramatic! You've driven everyone away! Every council meeting all the Nephilim ask about you. Everyone looks to you, the one who first discovered the way to do away with the artificial hierarchy between us and humans. This is after you almost turned the whole Cause into your personal vendetta, mind you, brother." Balthazar's voice softened. "Even after that they look up to you. You had no road map and still you found your way to Dean. You gave me hope after all my years of mourning Etienne."

"You do look well, my brother," Castiel admitted. "I am sorry for forgetting how you were before you lost faith in everything. Angels forget far too much."

"We remember when called to," Balthazar returned. "Think back through the millennia, to why we were friends. Why did we confide so much in each other?"

"Because you also felt things deeply. You were more skilled at humor than I will ever be, I fear, but we clung to each other because no one else understood."

Balthazar leaned forward urgently. "Grace told me a bunch of nonsense about a prophesy to the effect that one brother would be marked by his difference, one by the search for his lost difference, but I still set very little store by these vagaries from above, Cas. Think about how much I suffered for Etienne. I didn't properly have a soul then, but do you see me as very different now that I have this?" He touched the new organ lightly.

"No, Balthazar, no I don't." All the sullenness had fallen away from Castiel's visage. "You're notably much less miserable, but you are still you."

"And that's how I see you as well, my twin," the other angel said warmly. "You're just as much of a moody pain in the ass as always. And you still have a nose for the truth where no one else does."

"Apparently not," Castiel's glum expression returned. "Another soul fit into place with Dean's quite nicely."

"They didn't bond, you know," Balthazar said, and nodded at Cas' surprise. "I could see quite clearly when I saw the man on the battlefield. He remained a man. He and Dean might have changed each other, but it wasn't like that."

"I still can't hear him," Cas said, trying to cover his relief.

"Apparently Dean is quite skilled at not transmitting. I know he's been sighted in New York, but he's not in touch with even his family. His brother and uncle have tried to enlist me to spy on him but I refuse."

"There are many distractions in New York," Castiel muttered. "I'm quite sure he's been invited to these Council meetings if I have, and yet he has also stayed away."

"We have no way of knowing what is going on in his mind, but you're the one best placed to find out," Balthazar said, rising. "Perhaps you were listening to your impression of him in the past. His present self may not be closed to you—you may simply be looking for it in the wrong place, my brother."

"Tell me how to fix this bond, master my soul," Castiel implored in a rush as Balthazar turned to the door. "If I knew how to control my emotions and assume a clear head, I would, believe me I try. You who have known despair should understand."

Balthazar turned wearing his new, serene smile. "Neither love nor a soul is a thing, Cas. We both loved and suffered with no growth where we have one now. What I am discovering with Etienne is quite simply not the business of Grace or anyone else in Heaven. It's not as mechanistic as all that. Promise me you'll have an open mind."

Castiel murmured something and shut the door behind his friend. He curled in a corner and tried to reconcile the whirring of his virtues with the throbbing of his soul.


	23. Chapter 23

"What's good today?" Dean asked the elderly cook who came out of the kitchen to greet him. He'd made himself quite the regular at the Mongolian restaurant in Jackson Heights, Queens.

She grumbled out an epithet involving a type of coitus involving goats that he'd thought only a figure of speech when he first heard it from the Khan.

They burst out laughing. These guffaws at the creative profanity Mongolians seemed to have a hereditary genius for were the only laughter Dean got. "I've got a nice stew-I can skim off the broth for you," the old woman said, used to his liquid diet. "Salted milk to drink?"

"You betcha, ma'am," he said, actually looking forward to the meal for a change. The cook walked away muttering something about how he looked like he hadn't eaten since the last time she'd seen him, and Dean wondered if he would be healthier if he broke down and moved to the small Mongolian community in Queens, or better yet, to Mongolia itself.

The only time he felt remotely alive was when he went to go get a haircut at a Mongolian-run barber in New York's most diverse neighborhood, and then stopped for a meal at the adjoining restaurant with the strong-smelling stews that brought a warm feeling to his heart a block or two away.

Dean nodded at a few of the taxi drivers he knew from previous visits. If there wasn't much left of the famous warrior inside him, he was homesick for things that reminded him of his former inhabitant, and that wasn't limited to stinky food. For whatever reason, the people at the restaurant, and the guys hanging around the barbershop, they treated him completely normally—something Dean couldn't take for granted anymore from his family, the resistance or the general public.

After being the head of some cause or other for his whole life, Dean was realizing there wasn't much to him minus the hunting and plotting, and other people were bound to see it as well.

"Hey Red," the waiter said, using the Mongolian word for redhead that the small community chose for his nickname. He placed his steaming bowl on the table. "Did you hear the one about the camel?"

While he ate the two men traded dirty tales, the waiter sitting back in admiration at the classical style Dean had inherited from his ex-spirit. When he was finished, Dean headed out to the street, decided that he would spend the next year or two of his life around the only people that didn't make him feel like they were merely reflecting his own energy back at him.

Not up to dealing with the train, Dean found a discreet place to beam himself back to Manhattan from. He decided to hit one of his favorite health food joints to pick up some more protein powder.

"Hey, Dean!" The voice came from behind him and filled his heart with dread. Anyone who knew him by name wasn't anyone he wanted to talk to.

Dean turned, expecting someone from the Cause he would have to gently rebuff. He didn't recognize the face at all. Damn. Much worse.

"How's things?" asked the blonde-haired man in his mid-thirties who was wearing some expensively casual black blazer with a t-shirt. Not a combination Dean thought most people could pull off without looking like they were trying too hard. Could he have really poured his heart out to this guy during the phase when he still believed people were being kind to him out of the goodness of their hearts, and not because they were helpless before his huge power?

"What was the name of that guy who broke your heart? Christian?" Apparently he had. Dean met these people every once in awhile and felt terribly ashamed at the way he'd roped them into his own drama.

"Yeah, that was a hard time in my life. Thanks for listening, but I've turned the page since then," he said politely but firmly.

"You look real good," the man persisted, looking him up and down thoroughly. "I saw you across the street in midtown once, but you were getting on a bus. It's hard to mistake that look of yours."

"Oh yeah?" Dean grasped the canister and edged towards the cashier.

"You know, you look like a Benetton ad," the man said. "Exotic mix of features. You do remember me—Barry the photographer? You promised to let me take your picture sometime. Why not now?"

Kicking himself for a tearful promise made during a vulnerable time, Dean put his virtues back into place, the way he'd trained himself to flit around town for the last couple months. By hitting exactly the right frequency, people scarcely noticed him, or if they did, they were soon turned away.

"There's this great club where you can see some of my work," the man was running on as he followed Dean out of the shop. "Just take a look and if you don't like my style, no harm no foul."

Telling himself it was the least he could do to repay this stranger for acting as an extension of his own psyche, Dean got in a cab with the guy, who seemed just as friendly as all the other New Yorkers when he first arrived. Damn involuntary sunbeam, damn.

The photos Barry was showing him on his phone were really good-he wasn't kidding about being a professional.

"You never said what you did for a living," Barry said as the cab stopped in Hell's Kitchen.

"No I didn't," Dean said. "I'm actually thinking of going into farming," he said with a smile, holding on to his resolve to move to Mongolia.

"You've got the rugged thing down," Barry observed, walking into a nondescript warehouse building near the water.

The music hit Dean like a wall.

"Oh man, this is not my scene," he said, backing towards the door. Ever since he had become attuned to the Enochian vibrations surging across the planet's face, Dean was very sensitive to certain loud noises.

"Give it a minute," Barry urged, taking his arm and steering him towards the bar. Though it was only early evening, the place was rather full with people right in mid-intoxication. "These are mine, by the way," he said, pointing to the huge photos on the warehouse walls.

Dean didn't know much about art, but he could tell these were quality images because they made him feel something, he wasn't sure what, or even if he liked the feeling. It took a moment to see that they were artsy bondage shots cut up into pieces and reassembled into a montage of leather laces and metal grommets and lips curled back in some strange kind of fulfillment.

"Most magazines don't go for this sort of thing, so I do fashion as my day job," Barry yelled in his ear over the music. "What are you drinking?"

"Club soda," Dean yelled back, wishing to have all his wits about him so he could get out of this place as quickly as possible. It was interesting, though, he thought as the drink was placed into his hand. Now that the shock of the sound was over, he felt very relaxed.

"Techno music—everyone says they hate it because they don't give it a chance," Barry said, moving them towards a table.

Some of the other patrons came over to greet the photographer, and Barry indicated which of the photos were actually representations of these people who seemed unashamed at being depicted in handcuffs and harnesses.

Some were drag queens in towering boots and odd wigs, and others were completely normal-looking businessmen. Dean couldn't put his finger on what the people all had in common, but everyone was very friendly, as if it were an odd sort of family he'd stumbled upon.

Dean had more than enough family weirdness to consider adding kinky exhibitionism to the mix. Nevertheless, he felt thoroughly entertained. He was having a good time! This was the sort of anecdote-worthy stuff he was supposed to be doing in a big city! Maybe he just needed someone to force him out of his comfort zone.

"You're obviously really talented—" Dean began.

"Have you played Barry's drinking game yet?" one man asked. "He can read your mind."

"Somehow I doubt that," Dean said, sitting back with a smirk. He had so much practice mastering all of his virtues that it was only a vague kind of curiosity that had kept him in this odd club for this long.

"Sure you wouldn't like something stronger?" Barry asked. "No matter, the alcohol is not the operative factor. Now answer the first thing that pops into your head."

An odd assortment of the bar's denizens were gathering around. "Barry's a genius," one tipsy woman advised him. "That's how he captures who you really are in his pictures."

Seeing as this lady had figured in one of the more lurid photos, Dean wasn't sure that this was information he wanted to know.

"Word association: the sexual experience you had with the partner you were most compatible with," Barry asked.

"Motorcycle," Dean replied, thinking of the first time Cas drew him into his arms and vibrated him into a full-body orgasm.

"Interesting," the photographer replied. "Your favorite animal."

"Kitten," Dean answered without thinking. "Wait, I mean—"

"It's merely a game-next question," Barry quieted some of the smiles with a look. "What was the most significant thing you ever said to this partner?"

"Yes," Dean whispered, feeling the memory of Cas holding him in his arms and the kiss that spoke their bond into being.

"Last one. What was the hottest sexual position you shared with this person?" Barry asked with a frank smile. Ordinarily Dean would never let anyone ask him personal questions about this, and certainly nothing having to do with the supremely painful memory of the lost Castiel.

"Hands only," Dean said, feeling just a small hint of the experience he and the angel had shared in one body while in Las Vegas, the one that had changed them both forever.

"Hmmm," Barry murmured. "Let's move to your last sexual partner. What were the power dynamics like between you? Were you taller, for instance?"

"Not taller or bigger physically. This was a big dude we're talking about. But I think it's safe to say I was the one with the power," Dean said, thinking of Adonis marveling at the first sight of the Nephilim in the sky.

"He's not asking about money or any other kind of power, he's talking about in bed," one of the larger cross-dressers confided through silver lips that glinted in the strobe lights.

"In bed, he was more experienced, he was—"

"In control," Barry surmised. "You threw me a little bit with your sexual position, but now you must tell me—how long have you been a sub?"

When he was dating women Dean had been up for anything, and now that he'd expanded his horizons to men, he didn't know enough to be sure where to draw the line between the new world he was still discovering and what was off the map.

One thing he did know was that his experiences with Cas and Adonis were not things to be put in a checkbox of perversion. They were sacred, so much so that he had forbidden himself to think of the two men he hurt. In some part of his mind his ex-hunter's instincts were trying to reassert themselves. He didn't feel angry and defensive like he normally would at this extravagantly dressed crowd smiling encouragingly at what they thought they understood him to do in bed.

"You put something in my drink," he said, sniffing at the fizzy water.

"No, not at all," Barry replied, getting up. "There's something you should see."

Dean followed because he couldn't formulate a reason why he shouldn't. Everyone was smiling _at him_, giving cheery little waves or air kisses _at him_, and after these couple of months feeling alone with his immense self seeping into the people around him, Dean had to admit it touched him in a place that needed the warmth.

They went into a back area that was almost as big as the front bar. Barry walked up to some of the huge variety of expensive-looking camera equipment strewn about the room. There were subdivisions in the empty space, so that one area had a backdrop with red velvet paper and tasseled lamps. Another was very futuristic, with cream-colored pillows in irregular organic shapes all piled around and being used at that moment to prop up three people.

Dean didn't get a chance to examine all the other decorations because he was rooted to the spot, staring at one participant in each scenario.

They were angels. Angels in vessels.

"You were really upset when I talked to you all those months ago," Barry said. "All I knew is you made me feel something I had never felt, and never wanted to let go. I actually did take a picture of you when you weren't paying attention." The man took out his phone and flipped to a picture.

There was a reason why Dean would have never agreed to someone taking his picture. Darla had discovered it long ago when they first set up the surveillance equipment at Bobby's.

Dean and the other Nephilim appeared on film as if saturated with light, their human features barely detectible underneath.

It was a hell of an inconvenience at the DMV. Dean had had to take over the mind and body of a DMV attendant to allow a current-day, red-haired, high-cheekboned photo Darla had doctored for him to be placed in the new ID he had made before leaving for New York.

It was easier for Dean's brain to think about his driver's license than to process what this photographer had surmised about the meaning of the halo. Dean's virtues seemed stuck on some cheerful mode.

"I know enough about cameras to know that this wasn't something I did," Barry said softly, with a new urgency. "I asked everyone I could think of what could produce an artifact like that. Finally, I found an answer."

The blond-haired man contorted right before Dean and his eyes lidded over with black momentarily.

"Oh yes," the mouth said with a new intonation. "What your tawdry little cause didn't realize is that we're like viruses—you find one way to detect possession or cast it out, and we'll simply find a new way you haven't thought of trying to defend against. You didn't catch even the whiff of the demonic from Barry here, did you?"

"No, not at all," Dean said neutrally. "How did you manage it?"

"We have many new methods, make no mistake, but in this case it was very simple. I wasn't possessing your admirer at all. I merely explained to him what a rare find he'd set his sights on, and said that if he followed my instructions, I'd let him help."

Two kinds of lust skittered over the one face.

"What is your name?" Dean asked. "What have you done to me that I'm not fighting back?"

"Valac." The photographer bowed smoothly, making Dean think that the human and the demon must be cooperating to an unusual extent. There was barely any of the usual wrestling of wills. "And it's the music. You find it extremely pleasant. All of your kind do."

Dean's eyes were scanning the angels acting out any number of submissive scenarios. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see that most of the dominators were demons, although in a few cases they were humans.

"Angels have long felt alone at the pinnacles of power. There have always been places like this where they could let someone else be in control for a little while."

He didn't know how he would feel if these were merely consenting humans acting out their little fantasies, but all Dean knew was this warehouse of sad angels was nothing like what he'd had with his two lovers. He was watching something infinitely miserable and dangerous, something that no angel would seek out if he knew how to achieve true union.

It was enough to make him go back into politics, to show Heaven why Nephilism could help a lot of angels.

Dean wanted to shout out the formula for becoming a Nephilim and finding the intimacy these poor cousins of his obviously lacked, but his virtues seemed stuck like a broken record.

"You can't make me do anything with anyone," Dean said with much less fervor than he felt. "I know how you demons work. I'd have to say yes."

A black tendril flitted out from Barry's body and just grazed the back of Dean's hand.

The contact that seeped into his skin gave him a violent jolt of arousal, despite some muffled portion of his brain screaming at him—"Get the hell out of here, stat, dumbass!"

"Some people find more prosaic forms of penetration to be irresistibly pleasurable, particularly when mild coercion relieves them of any responsibility for choosing it," the flat tones Valac imposed on Barry's voice came out with a reasonable cadence.

Dean's two sets of ears hung on the next words.

"But you like something both more subtle and more severe. You find having your very will taken over by another to be the highest form of satisfaction. Am I right?"

The dark tendril snaked up Dean's arm and he watched his limb respond by unbuttoning his shirt.

"I do enjoy possessing someone myself, so you are going to be a rare treat, Dean," Valac said. "You had quite the wall built up around yourself, but Barry managed to catch you in an unguarded moment. Well done."

The human photographer was allowed to come to the fore for a moment as a reward. "When I met you that night, you were irresistible: a badass in a leather jacket and just underneath, so vulnerable. Can I start taking pictures now?" he asked the demon inside him.

"Of course," Valac said as more black tendrils licked at Dean's increasingly exposed skin, pushed him back against a cushion. "Make sure you use audio. I want to get this."

"Fuck-you-" Dean spit at the demon with difficulty. If that was all he could get out on the physical plane, he couldn't even manage a peep in Enochian on the angelic plane. He tried to reach the other angels in the room, but they were lost to activities they didn't even know were too sordid and small for their natures.

As he had done many times since he'd bonded with Cas, even after he thought his mate dead or knew everything to be broken beyond repair, Dean prayed.

That was the word for it, he supposed. He conjured up the image of Cas' vessel and the profile of light and cantilevered wings he had begun to know before it was taken from him. This was the truth that had hauled him back from Hell—once literally, one figuratively. The avalanche of light from their bonding that had left a few crucial pebbles inside his soul—these grains of Cas had never left him. Dean never doubted that much, and he didn't doubt it now.

"Cas, I need help. Even if you hate me too much to rescue me one more time, tell Balthazar or Sam or someone who still cares. New York City, Hell's Kitchen, near the water, I think it's 47th street. Beware of the music, they have technology against angels and humans—"

"You're a rare breed. I can't wait to study you," Valac purred. "All the others are so predictable, you understand. Like all military creatures, if you have a whip and a boot they can enact their little servitude rituals for hours. But you're not just experiencing a release. You're thinking of your lover."

Dean glared back with a stony face and willed his body to stop receiving the black wisps with a shameful relief.

"Your lover, who, if the gossip is to be trusted, has cast you off forever," the demon continued.

"Don't listen to him. They all lie," Dean's mind told the rest of him.

"You'll never experience the real thing with him again. Nor with humans, who experience you as an overload in a light socket. So who then? Who else will make you feel this way?"

Parts of Dean's consciousness were being taken over by some dark, syrupy feeling as if he were looking through black amber. To be able to not think. Not think of losing Cas, or Adonis. Not think of his poor showing in the apocalypse. Not to be a disappointment. Not to have to cart around all this extra _self_ and continually try to jam it into a small glove.

"No," he said, feeling his body bucking at the many black hands skidding over the surface of his lonely skin.

"Do you think you deserve to be with anyone after what you did?" Valac pursued.

"No." The word came much more softly this time.

"All your old files are still in Hell," the demon's voice seemed to echo within Dean's head. "I've had time to study them. You've always had these tastes, Dean. Before Hell, certainly after Hell. Inclinations that can't be satisfied by any human or angel, by anyone other than one of Hell's denizens. Didn't you often feel your angel to be holding back, afraid of abusing his greater power, when that's what you wanted from him?"

"I wanted him to not hold back because he's a little uptight, sort of obsessive," Dean said without being able to hold the thought back. "But I like him that way! He's good. He cares about me because he's good."

"This isn't good, precisely." A few of the black hands were working on him with greater purpose, as if they knew more than Dean did about what he wanted, and how. "In fact, I'd say it's rather bad. But unlike your angel, I won't hold back. I have no compunction about taking you to your limit and beyond."

The whimper came out of Dean's throat and he wished he could yank it back.

"How does that sound—surrendering to someone who cares more about your desires than some silly old rules? Not being alone in your flesh and your power anymore? Being small rather than huge?"

"Yes," said one one-millionth of Dean that apparently meant more than all the rest of him that was rioting in impotent horror in his mind.

"I didn't hear you. Say it again for the camera," Valac wheedled.

"Yes."

Some indefinite length of time later, about which Dean could remember very little except the persistent flash of a camera, he lay back against a couch and drank some juice someone pressed into his hand.

"How do you feel?" Barry asked. Or maybe it was the demon.

Dean had never cared so little for anything in his life.

His lip curved very slightly.

"I thought so. Don't you want to get dressed?"

Dean shrugged.

"You ought to, because we're going on a little journey."

His hands pulled on his clothes and laced his shoes.

"You're not even curious where we're going?"

The ex-hunter's mind struggled to parse the word.

"Very good. As a reward, I'll tell you. I'm taking you home to meet the family, so to speak."

The half-angel didn't know if Barry had ever said where he was from.

"Valac, I'm Valac," the demon said patiently. "We have no more use for Barry at the present, though some of his photos are going to bring a lot of delight the universe over.

"May I have some more juice?" Dean asked.

"You can have all the juice you like," the other man was saying while drawing some symbols around them. The Latin words roared in Dean's ears.

"We've been finding that without Crowley and Lucifer there is quite the power vacuum down here. I, myself, believe I can remedy the first vacancy, but for the second, well, there's just a certain cachet in having a titular leader who is a type of angel."

"I hope you don't expect me to do anything," Dean muttered.

"No, dear, you're the eye candy. My trophy spouse, so to speak. And don't you worry, after a hard day of administrating hell, Daddy's going to have more than enough energy to give you the punishment you need."

With a calm smile, Dean stepped through the gates of Hell.

"Have you felt it again?" Balthazar asked Castiel again.

"No, I keep telling you, I got the first clear sense of him many months, but the meaning of the message was garbled in some way."

Cas took a deep breath. He was trying to fight this new irritability that was so easy for him to fall into these days. "And then an absence took over. I don't know how to explain it. A terrible absence that is not death."

Sam and Bobby were also in Cas' old room to discuss Dean having missed checking in for two weeks in a row. Etienne was by Balthazar's side.

"You say some of your angel buddies have seen Dean out and about in New York. Did they say how he looked?" Bobby asked.

"They say he looked slightly troubled, but that could be a typical angelic understatement or merely a reflection of Dean's nervous temperament," Balthazar replied.

"Most angels are not very good with emotions," Etienne cut in, and they smiled.

"Whatever, he's not been at his apartment for two weeks, and I guess when Dean paid cash for a year in advance the landlord stopped paying attention." Sam said. "The weird thing is, everyone we talked to seemed to remember him. We've spent our lives trying to fly underneath the radar—that's not like Dean."

"I, too, am having a hard time understanding that Dean has changed in some ways," Cas said quietly. "As a wise person once suggested, let's look for the man he is and not the man he was."

"Don't you have demonic contacts?" Bobby asked Balthazar.

"I did. The souls I rescued from Limbo volunteered to fight for the apocalypse but had the expectation that they would be released from Hell afterwards. It's certainly what I thought, because they released Etienne, but apparently their appeal is going through channels." He and his mate exchanged a dark look. "They may be every bit as irritated at the bureaucratic delay as I was at mine. Not sure they'll help me."

"It's worth a try," Sam said. "I don't think any of the Navajo gods are anxious to meddle in this plane again, but they've got this whole pantheon of minor spirits who can be used as spies in almost any subtle realm. I'll get some scouts going."

"Good idea," Balthazar said. He and Castiel exchanged a look on the angelic plane. Ever since Sam had attained his well-deserved respect in the tribes, and then had taken over the lead role in the apocalypse, they knew Dean might be feeling a little unnecessary. They were unsure of how to remedy that, however.

"Is this how you go about solving problems?" Etienne waved his hand dismissively. "The man saw his life fall apart in the space of a day, he has no purpose, and you propose to haul him back to some place where he doesn't feel he has a reason to be? To what? Lecture him about how worried he made you?"

"Actually, that's the way we do things," Bobby said. "You want to share with the class or stop your bitching?"

"I don't know Dean at all, but I know an existential crisis when I see one," Etienne said, and he wheeled on Cas. "Do you care for him or not?"

"Of course I do," the angel grumbled.

"Would you take him back?" He saw Cas' hesitation. "This moment, if he appeared right before you, would you take him back?"

"I'm wiling to give it a try," Castiel said testily.

"That's good enough. All the rest of you, it's your job to get the message out to as many channels as possible so that it inevitably reaches Dean's ears."

"And what are you going to do, if I may ask?" No matter how many times Balthazar told Bobby about his mate's humble beginnings in a small Spanish town, the old hunter didn't like the French, particularly French intellectuals. He felt like Etienne was talking down to him.

"I am going to write the message. No offense to any of you in this room-I'm sure you're lovely people, but I have some idea of what it is like to have one's soul crying out for someone who seems gone forever. Being rational is unlikely to reach him."

The newest member of their group pulled out the notebook that went everywhere with him, and even Bobby looked away from the memories of Hell just under the surface of the tanned face.


	24. Chapter 24

Castiel motioned for the whiskey, and when Bobby placed it in front of him he took a long, sorrowful swig straight from the bottle.

"Takes the edge off when you have a soul," observed Sam.

The bottle was passed around in silence by all the people who most cared about Dean who were congregated in Cas' interdimensional room.

"I'm truly sorry I lost the trust of the souls from Limbo trapped in Hell." Balthazar was uncharacteristically downcast this evening. "There was nothing I could do to help their suit with Grace having forgotten them down there, but I could have at least sent them a message telling them so. If we'd stayed in contact I would have known about what was happening with Dean, perhaps even before it happened."

Etienne looked stricken. "How soon I forgot a century of torment, some of which I spent mingling my own dust with these souls."

"This complicates matters for remedying the situation, but I was the one who knew about this," Cas blurted out with a tongue thickened with drink.

"You knew my nephew sold his soul to the devil? Or became the devil, or however you conceive of this worst of all worst-case scenarios?" Bobby was kicking himself for not keeping better tabs on Dean, and he didn't seem to mind a stray kick falling on anyone else.

"I knew he had a certain—pattern—as it were, branded onto his soul from his time in Hell. I saw it for the first time when I met him there, but it was clearly visible when I looked for it later on." Castiel flinched, knowing how much Dean would loathe these intimate details being alluded to.

"But you fixed all that," Sam said, trying to be soothing. "You lopped off his Extra Deadly, or whatnot. I was never clear on the particulars."

Cas blushed.

"It grew back," Bobby said.

"It seems that Dean has a tendency to slip into acedia when he is unhappy," Balthazar surmised. "It's no reflection on either Cas or Dean."

"But having one more than your average Deadly Sins is a good excuse for Hell to keep him and for Heaven to dust off that fatwa they put on him last time around," Bobby observed glumly. "How can your people go from saving Dean a seat of honor in that council to putting a price on his head?"

"There is a lingering bad feeling about the last angel-like creature throwing his lot in with Hell," Balthazar said drily.

"Look, we're losing focus, guys," Sam said impatiently. "One of my scouts did make contact with the Limbo people. They were dying to share what they knew—with someone other than Balthazar. I guess they saw other souls go through what's happening to Dean and it's the surest path to being picked up with a dustpan." Sam's voice failed him for a moment. "Unlike those folks who broke apart before, Dean's got all of us working on busting him out. We're going to do this. Let's focus on how."

Balthazar sighed. "Even if he's heard Etienne's lovely message blasting through the ether in Enochian, Dean's not in a place to really get it. At this point I'm not sure if he would be receptive to anything you have to say, Cas."

"I don't think there's anything I could say at this point," Castiel said darkly, thinking of the series of actions that worked last time to snap Dean out of acedia. Curing Dean's trauma required a bitter medicine—especially bitter for Cas, who didn't want to do anything remotely like those demons who had hurt Dean.

"To think that I considered you family!" Bobby burst out. "Don't you know that with people you love like family, at least in a hillbilly family like mine, you don't just give up on them? You holler at 'em and they hang up on you and you cause a scene or two, and finally after you say a lot of ugly things you're not afraid of saying the pretty ones anymore. I'm beginning to think our Dean got the short end of the stick, at least boyfriend-wise. Yes, I said it!"

Bobby glared around the room at the shocked faces. "You angels can time-travel and look into people's souls and live for thousands of years, and you get all whiny over a couple of emotions?" He was shouting at Cas. "You've spent the last couple months being all pissed at Dean without even being interested in what he had to say for himself? Oh, and complaining that your bond didn't work out like everyone else's. Well, I haven't seen much of the Five, but these two—" he gestured at Etienne and Balthazar—" It ain't nearly a fairy tale with them. Anyone with eyes can see that they're scared shitless that all the bad stuff might come to overtake the good."

Bobby was pacing on the pillowy nothingness underneath the rug.

"I don't know what self-help book you got a hold of, buddy, but what you and Dean are doing through is normal. Or it was until Dean was made figurehead of Hell. For Dean's sake I hope he can listen to whatever excuse you have for having stopped trying, other than your foolish pride, but I'm not sure I'm even interested anymore."

Bobby stopped to catch his breath and turned from the blank-faced Cas to where Etienne and Balthazar were sitting very close. "Can one of you get me the hell back to Earth? I feel like shooting something, and unlike here in Nowheresville, back there when you hit something shit explodes."

"I'll take you, my friend," Balthazar volunteered.

As soon as they were gone, Etienne wiped away a tear and turned to Sam. "Is your uncle always so spot-on?"

"Nah, he's gotten all touchy-feely since he started dating Sheriff Josie," Sam said, refilling the other Nephilim's glass. "It's been years since Bobby's seen an emotion without several fingers of whiskey in between him and it."

Cas was sitting very quietly. Then he was gone.

"If I ever get to the point where I don't say 'hello, goodbye, excuse me,' please send me back to comportment school," Etienne said wryly.

"I think you're a lot classier than Cas—than anyone I've met actually," Sam laughed. "Guess good manners went out of style since your generation. Cas is still much, much more accessible than he used to be. Up until a couple days ago, I would've said this whole transformation process brought out the best in either half of the couple. I mean, the Five could be a little intense while they were living with us, but Cas was way more, I don't know, whole, since he got with Dean. And vice versa."

The words came rushing out from where Sam had been afraid to voice them before. "Etienne, you seem pretty cool. You're determined to find your own way through this transformation thing. And my family has always thought highly of Balthazar."

Here he nodded at the angel who had reappeared from his errand.

"But I lived almost every minute of my life next to Dean and I didn't know how fucking miserable he was. I mean, I knew, but it's scary that it becomes background noise after awhile. It doesn't matter to me which guy he's with. I haven't given up on Cas, but what I don't understand is what made my brother give up on the good shit once he finally found it."

"You really are abnormally well-adjusted," Balthazar said. "If you don't understand that dark space, be glad that you don't."

Castiel showed up at Remiel's office, which was already a warren of scrolls and tomes after his short time in power.

"Remy, we can't let this continue. Whatever your feelings are about bonded ones, it's simply bad business to allow half of a couple to stay in Hell," Cas said in a rush. "It makes the whole new regime look bad."

"It's Remiel, and I'm well aware of this fact," the new leader said in his losing battle against the hated nickname. "What are you proposing?"

"The last time Dean suffered from acedia, there was a significant faction that wanted to keep him on a leash, as a weapon to use against our more powerful enemies. He destroyed that demigod as if he were nothing."

Remiel impassively waited for the rest.

"As we both know, there are some loyalist factions left in Heaven—or more precisely, angels that couldn't give a toss about Raphael but don't particularly want to change, either," Cas continued. "Especially irksome are the ones who miss all the fighting that used to be the order of the day around here."

"And the absolute worst thing we could do would be to take them seriously, and thus give them the confrontation they so desire," Remiel said as if talking to a child.

How was anyone supposed to have remembered that Remy hated violence when he was so ill-tempered? Castiel wondered again. "Hell lacks your subtlety," he said with a slight nod. "To them, it will make perfect sense that Heaven wishes to borrow their acedia-weapon to take out some upstarts."

"You wish to negotiate a loan?" Remiel sniffed. "There's no way the demons would believe you intend to give Dean back. And the price would be exorbitant."

"It would take a very skilled negotiator, who would no doubt make it seem like the demons were getting the best of the matter—a concession that Dean belonged with them," Castiel said and waited for his meaning to become clear.

The other angel lost his cool. "I will most certainly not do it! It would be a complete loss of my decorum as a leader."

"Exactly why they would take such a request seriously," Cas replied with a smile.

Remiel did a good pantomime of reluctance and finally shooed Castiel out the door with his agreement to parlay with Hell.

"I'm not doing this for you, brother, nor even for Heaven," Remiel whispered. His bond with the Other Dean was almost completely unobtrusive. They were separated by another reality, after all, but occasionally he felt a little tug. During the several days he was locked up with the other timeline's Winchester, he'd come to respect the man. He knew how to wait, first of all, and most importantly, wait without sniveling. The human had absorbed all of Remiel's lessons about the workings of Heaven so that he could put them to good use in his reality. The leader liked smoothly functioning things, which was how he viewed the other Winchester.

That the Dean in his own reality was anything but functional didn't interfere with the transferred respect in Remiel's mind.

Besides, he was sure the far-away Dean would want him to help. And Remiel hated ruffling feathers. Even a universe away.

Dean was kept in a room, one of the many mercies he was thankful for.

The last time he was in Hell, he'd had to share a large space with other suffering souls. They were no good for companionship because they were lost in their private Hells. But it mattered to Dean that in this room that was usually scoured clean by loneliness, there were some things that he could cling to as his own.

There was the whip they sometimes left with him. He liked knowing it was only used on him. He could touch his suffering in the length of leather, and this was happiness some days. That his torment had a shape—that it did not go on forever.

Then they would take it away. But he was grateful for that, too, because Dean knew he needed to be deprived in order to be able to appreciate things.

The sounds, much like the ones from the club in New York, he was scarcely aware of anymore, though he knew them to be instrumental in the control the demons held over his angelic virtues. One of the things he most appreciated was having that now-hated power nullified.

It was so different being downstairs this time! Now that he'd chosen it. Now that he understood that someone was sculpting his emotions, his loss, that it was all a lesson, an enjoyment once he could crack the code and see it that way.

Right now there was nothing. But that meant something to him. Before, he'd made up Betty the Bottle to keep him company when he craved alcohol's release, which was denied him in Hell. Now Dean called his Nothing Neal.

Neal was the name he cried out when he rubbed himself up against the nothing that never failed him. The nothing that would always be his, after losing everything.

"What do you think they will do the next time, Neal?" Dean asked. "Oh, you're right, the boot was good. But I like it when Valac, or really anybody, tries something new."

Neal and Dean shivered together in anticipation. Everything was gloriously simple when you were empty inside. Why had he let Cas convince him that acedia was a bad thing? It was like an icy sorbet that kept his palate clear for the pleasures he was discovering.

The ones that would never leave him.

Dean wasn't sure if "deserve" was even part of the equation. Sure, Valac spouted a lot of demeaning crap about him deserving this and not deserving that, but Dean was smart enough to know that if there was some bigger picture he was being measured up against, some random demon wouldn't be doing the measuring.

The footsteps echoed through the nothingness and Neal vibrated pleasingly against Dean's sensitized skin. When they stopped, Dean knew it was part of the game.

When the footsteps started up again too soon before he could get truly desperate with anticipation, he knew something was up.

"You're the picture of loveliness, my sweet," Valac said with unusual directness. "And I want to show you off just as you are. Unfortunately, protocol requires dressing you, so put these on."

The clothing was tossed at Dean's face and he scrambled to obey. The clothes were more form-fitting than he would normally wear, but then, Dean's clothes had been shredded off his body some time ago, so perhaps they just felt confining.

"You're not curious where I'm taking you? What perfection you are," Valac said. "I have a reward for such obedience."

Dean held out his hands for the blows he expected.

"No, no, dear one, a different kind of reward." He took in the other's disappointment fondly. "If you are very good, I will give you a punishment such as you have never dreamed of."

Shuddering with anticipation, Dean followed Valac to the door to the Nether Realms, where another demon, this one already wearing a vessel, was waiting for them.

"This is Darius, he will be your handler on this excursion."

Dean felt an unpleasant kind of anguish wash over him.

"Don't worry. You needn't make any decisions for yourself, and he'll bring you right back when you're done. Make Daddy proud."

Dean nodded and followed his keeper up to Earth.

Valac approached one of the periscopes the upper echelon demons had access to in Hell. He couldn't wait to see the results of his handiwork paraded before the angels. If he could emasculate one of their shining stars, they had to consider that he could do it to any of them.

Besides, as every sadist knew, the subject truly belonged to you only when you left the door to their cell open and the creature never left.

"All right now, as discussed, any funny stuff and he goes back for good," Darius said to Remiel. "Our realm only agreed to deal with you, Remy, because of your millennium of fair dealings."

"Yes, well, I'm rather occupied these days, so let 's stamp out this insurgency, for both our sakes, shall we—these warrior-angels are the ones most likely to attack your troops," the angel said, "And it's Remiel."

They had agreed to meet near Chicago because there was, in fact, a knot of disgruntled angels based there. A group of antsy warriors who were only too glad to see a little anti-demon action.

"How do you manage him in Hell?" Remiel asked conversationally. "I would think he would upset the balance of things even there. Do you see the effect he's having upon these humans?"

It was remarkable. Remiel had scarcely ever seen such a grievous case of acedia. Dean's spiritual dryness was all but cracking the pavement. Pedestrians seemed to visibly wilt as they passed.

"It's one of the warehouses down this street," the angel pointed as he turned. "They've been cloaking themselves to make it hard to fix on their exact location. Or perhaps they move around. We shall soon see."

"I don't see why Valac didn't simply loose Dean on Heaven if he's that powerful," Darius remarked as they approached a doorway.

"Without an angel to control him, to point the weapon and fire, I'm afraid he's quite useless," the angel said of the Nephilim who tagged along as if oblivious that he was the subject of conversation. "Aren't you Dean?"

All the while Remiel had been trying to contact the Winchester man on the angelic plane, but his virtues seemed strangely stilled. Dean gave no indication that he felt alluded to by Remiel's human or Enochian words.

"This is the one," the angel announced. "No need to go in as yet. Dean, have you heard from Castiel recently?"

A spasm passed over his face. "What's this about, Remy?" demanded Darius. "I thought you were going to disintegrate your fellows with him."

"This is the weapon, you fool," the angel replied. "He has to be good and miserable. You probably wouldn't have heard, then, that Cas has taken up with someone else," he resumed.

Dean stifled a cry.

"I've heard him say that he's grateful you came into his life—and then left it—leaving him to meet someone more engaging."

"Who—who is it?" Dean asked through gritted teeth. His virtues were wheeling crazily, the angel noted with some satisfaction.

"And you'll be interested to know that I hear things through my bond with your counterpart, at times. Apparently he and Adonis picked right up where they left off. Quite a happy reunion."

Dean balled up his hands at his ears. "Stop it! Stop it! Darius, I want to go home!" He turned to the demon. "Take me home."

"Just a little bit more," Remiel said calmly. "Did you know that you were very carefully sidelined during the apocalypse because everyone expected you to behave badly? Everyone, Balthazar, Bobby, Sam, they were plotting without you for many weeks."

"No, that's not true. I was only useless in the last few minutes," Dean sobbed.

"You've noticed that you can't feel Castiel anymore, no doubt. It's because he's bonded with his new fellow," Remiel said confidentially. "But I suppose that doesn't matter to you because nothing does, in the final analysis, does it?"

Suddenly Dean's anguish was wiped clean. He felt nothing, because he expected nothing.

Remiel nudged the ray of dryness in the direction of Darius.

The vessel and demon dried out into dust in an instant.

"So sorry," Remiel said gently to the human who was just killed. It was the only human life he was responsible for taking in his long existence, and he wanted to weep. "I'll make it up to you," he promised the soul he nudged heavenward.

"All right, all of you, be ready for the inevitable demon response," Remiel said to the angels inside, loathing that he was giving battle orders. "Dean, come with me."

The man's obedience was lamentable, but the angel was glad to not have to use any more force that day.

During the next several days, the best of Heaven's intelligence was employed in trying to snap Dean out of his lethargy while not letting his spiritual dryness spread. In the meantime, there was no shortage of warriors willing to fight against Hell, while the underworld forces were curiously ineffective.

"We want a signed deal that you let us out of this inferno once and for all," was the message that reached Remiel from the Limbo souls soon after the fighting began. "In exchange we use our might to disrupt that of the demons."

Remiel dispatched a tersely worded memo to the Arcane Matters office and saw it returned with Grace's stamp of approval in no time at all.

Further evidence of Grace's scheming aroused only the tiniest of snorts from the leader. Keeping that extra bit of insurance behind enemy lines must have been Grace's plan all along. Lucky for them Dean provided an opportunity for the lost souls to prove their usefulness.

The skirmish with Hell was not one that anyone seriously feared would be lost. The symbolic impact of Dean's broken condition had been made—no demon would go to war to bring him back—the creatures craved novelty, after all. The real battle was going on in the anatomists' chambers—the last angels to know what to do with a broken heart, unfortunately.

It was Remiel's idea to place Dean in one of the more beautiful gardens and leave him be with one or another of Heaven's best troubadours singing gently in the background.

"Everyone likes a little solace," Remiel said brusquely when Balthazar stopped by to comment on the slight improvement in their patient.

"He's started weeping. I believe that's a good sign—tears aren't dry," Balthazar observed. "It's time to move him into a secure location for the meeting."

Just when he'd gotten used to the hallways being free of screams, thought Remiel, calling for Castiel.

Dean alternated between different kinds of suffering and he no longer knew which was the kind he liked. It was very confusing, like not knowing which way gravity was working.

Most of all, Dean hated being uncertain.

He and Neal discussed it. Sometimes Neal sang to him. It was nice.

"Why have they taken me to Hell?" he asked his nothingness. Hell was where everything hurt, wasn't it? Dean tried to remember. He fought at all the creatures that came around and tried to talk to him, filling all his senses with lies.

"Stop talking to me! Stop that noise!" he screamed at all the Enochian voices, and then he yelled at the ones that spoke in English using Mongolian.

"I'm going to be a yak farmer. Maybe some goats," Dean confided to Neal. "I hear there's the most wonderful sort of Nothing in remote Mongolia. But not as good as you," he rushed to say to his nothing.

"Go away you! We don't need your kind here!" Dean bellowed in Mongolian at the presence he could feel down the corridor.

"I just want to meet your companion," a voice returned in the same language.

"This is Neal, he never goes away because he isn't here," Dean said proudly, gesturing into the empty chamber without turning around. He wasn't that interested in whoever it was, and they would soon leave.

"Alas, I think you will find it harder to get rid of me," the answering thought rebounded in Dean's brain.

"You!" Dean wheeled on Castiel standing in the doorway, wearing a projection of his old vessel that Dean could see straight through now. "You have no right to be in my head if you've bonded with another."

Cas chuckled.

"You think this is funny?" Dean fumed.

"Something you should learn, Dean, is that there is literally no way to know what Remiel means by what he says. There's always a grain of truth in it, but often just that."

"So what, you sort of bonded with some other dude?"

"He most likely meant that I put other priorities ahead of you for a time." Castiel's truth-virtue sliced somewhere deep inside Dean. "I was very unhappy to find you had been with someone else and I wanted to punish you." Now that he said it aloud, it sounded foolishly simple. Perhaps Bobby Singer had been right about having it out face to face.

Dean screamed at Castiel in assorted languages until finally he had no more reproaches to share.

There was a silence, and then a sob.

"I'm so totally fucked this time, Cas. I can't blame this on you, so please don't feel responsible for me selling myself to Hell."

The retching went on for a while and then Dean lay in a heap.

"Are you going to just stand there forever?" he whispered.

"Would you like me to leave?" Castiel asked sadly.

"No, dummy. I thought you could hear my thoughts again."

"This soul thing is quite disconcerting. I have a hard time knowing the difference between what my soul is telling me it wants and what I'm actually hearing."

Dean was unnaturally still while Castiel edged towards him and then ran an angelic hand through his hair.

"I like the red," the angel said. "And the blue."

"There's not much left of the old me," Dean said sadly.

"I'm apparently even more of a moody pain in the ass," Cas whispered into the top of his head.

"Everything's gone to shit for real," Dean warned as he melted into the profusion of wings. Without a vessel in the way it felt like he was plunging straight into that nuclear reactor that had such a nice effect on him.

"That sounds wonderful," Cas murmured into the neck that felt like home. "I've missed falling apart with you. Sometimes nice new things come out of it."

Dean still wasn't sure that was possible anymore, but he loved the way he and Castiel fit together.

They quieted certain thoughts to a murmur so they wouldn't interrupt the proceedings:

Where Dean learned all of the things he was very knowledgeable about now.

Why his actions seemed weighted down somehow, as he barely nudged Castiel into the desired actions.

The anxiety with which Castiel drank up every caress, like someone dying of thirst lapping up individual drops of rain.

That there was so much more to them now—two souls, two angelic bodies, one human body, one similacrum of a body—that it wasn't quite the easy surrender Dean experienced with Cas before.

They fumbled and there were silences. At points they seemed much smaller thant heir history together, still so new. Afterwards they lay together, afraid to stir, as if one wrong movement would shatter them apart again.

"What's going on?" Dean finally asked.

"You can hear the footsteps, I forget," Castiel caressed one of Dean's new wings. "There's a council meeting soon."

"It's okay, you can go," Dean said dully, edging away.

"I was hoping you would accompany me. They've been saving you a seat all this time," Castiel drew him close.

"There's nothing I could add to a fancy-ass heavenly policy meeting."

"On the contrary, your presence would make all the difference to me. We can trade thoughts while they all go on about technical things and planmaking."

"That would never have occurred to you before," Dean said suddenly. "Breaking the rules, passing notes in class. Okay, I'll go."

"Er, Dean," Cas said when the ex-hunter had his hand on the door. "We're not prudish here in Heaven, but you might feel more comfortable in clothes."

"Oh yeah, I forgot." Dean pulled on his clothes without a trace of embarrassment.

Cas followed him out, hiding away some of the lingering concerns about his maybe-on-again-lover in some private place.


	25. Chapter 25

Dean walked next to Cas, following the influx of angels filing into a large room in a section of Heaven he had never seen before.

"This is your place," Cas said with a catch in his voice, and the two of them sat down with the Ten, as they were now, the Five Nephilim who had lived at Bobby's and their partners. Balthazar directed a sardonic grin at them both and took the last of the seats facing the rest of the crowd.

Dean could pick out some of the angels in the audience as having souls in various levels of development, but there were no other humans besides the five he was sitting with. Then there were many, many other ordinary angels, if he could say hanging around with freaking angels was old hat at this point. They seemed to have no problem with facing an ex-hunter who still hadn't found his sea legs after completely falling apart. For the first time since maybe he began to capture snippets of Enochian floating through the night skies, Dean was awed at what he'd been let into.

"Let the Council come to order," Ambriel said.

"Session number 102 in the New Era," his mate, Rosa, continued.

Wonder soon gave way to boredom -probably two of the most boring hours of Dean's life.

He didn't know what he expected was actually behind the curtain in Heaven, but the workings of power were mostly a lot of back and forth about details he couldn't follow. Hr knew it was important, but the brain fog that used to fall on him while in school kept him wishing he had a knife and a desk he could carve AC/DC logos into, always a good way to pass the time.

Dean did get the gist of the proceedings, which was that the Nephilim were trying to figure out ways to create more symbiotic relationships between angels and people, whether they eventually bonded or not. Their argument for the old guard was that attracting more souls would enrich Heaven if people weren't left so desperately alone for much of their lives.

Most of the peanut gallery didn't seem so much opposed as flummoxed—how to switch the whole mechanism from infighting between brothers to enlightened administration? The old laissez-faire attitude didn't require much manpower, or understanding of the human condition.

The participants discussed various concrete proposals as well as the new principles that should govern the angelic mission. Up until that moment, Dean had been grateful for Cas' presence, but now he thought to his companion, "Do you ever think that we got together just so that the Ten could become what they are? They're pretty awesome—like a Congress that actually does stuff."

"It has crossed my mind," Cas thought back. "They are quite splendid, aren't they?"

Dean detected a note of sadness. "Has it held you back, my not being here?" The five couples each functioned as a unit. Why wasn't Etienne there?

"No," Cas said with a mental chuckle. "For some reason my soul has taken me on another path than theirs. Nothing seems simple to me anymore, there is no certitude, but you see how they are."

They watched the earnest faces conferring about the best ways to create a better age.

As if sensing they were being watched, Lester suddenly turned to them. "Do you have any ideas, Dean? We've been looking forward to your wisdom."

All eyes were on Dean and he wished he could drop out of Heaven in an instant.

"Thanks, man, I'll let you know." Cas squeezed his hand. The other couples sat very close and occasionally touched each other as well.

Soon the moment was over, but he struggled to understand why it felt so wrong being at the council.

The Nephilim were all trying to simultaneously observe him without seeming like they were watching.

The others were afraid that whatever had happened to him, at the vanguard of the transformation process, would eventually happen to them. Falling in love with another, becoming a plaything of Hell—each of them either feared such a terrible fate, or feared his partner undergoing it.

"I also feel that way sometimes, but there is no way to compare one path with another, my love," Castiel thought at him.

They both started at the first endearment between them since their reunion, and a slight ripple went through the crowd as well. Dean wasn't used to being around a bunch of beings that vibrated at a similar frequency.

The couple smoothed over the moment and sat through the rest of the meeting in silence.

"Thank God it's over," Dean whispered to Cas when everyone got up.

"This is the last part and then we can leave," Castiel whispered back, getting to his feet as Remiel entered and took the floor.

Within a few minutes the brusque angel had discarded all but a few of the ideas that had taken the group hours to formulate and assigned tasks to most of those present.

"He's quite something, isn't he?" Castiel thought at him. "You really should thank him for intervening on your behalf—Remiel went to great lengths." The fact that the pacifist had taken a life for his lover's sake was not lost on Cas.

Remiel nodded stiffly at the angels who were exiting the room and then looked at Dean calmly. "There is a matter I wish to discuss with you-cousin."

Cas looked stricken for some reason and scanned both their visages before leaving with the rest.

"Yes sir, I wanted to thank you for helping me," Dean stammered, not sure how to relate to a head of state who wasn't a total dick, like Raphael was.

The leader cut him off. "That's not what I wished to discuss. Ask me your question."

"My—" Dean's brain was paralyzed for a moment and then he remembered that this was the angel who was bonded to his counterpart in the other dimension. The worry that had been consuming him came tumbling out. "How is he?" He realized it might get back to Cas that he was asking about Adonis, so he amended, "I mean, how did their apocalypse work out—did they rescue their Sam?"

"They performed their parts as required. Sam is out of Hell, but he has suffered a great deal," Remiel said in his usual bored tone. "And the Other Dean is currently not with his partner. It seems they decided upon some time apart."

Dean had no idea how he was supposed to feel about that, and it was even more confusing to have his emotions pulled in a hundred directions under the cold gaze of the new head angel. He also couldn't help but feel that this conversation was exactly what Cas had been afraid would go on between them.

"I really hear very little," Remiel said softly. "The door is meant to stay closed between dimensions for reasons I believe you now understand very well."

"Fate," Dean spat. "We're just supposed to take our lot and go through the required motions. Haven't all of you been paying attention? I screw everything up, so can't Fate and the rest of you leave me be?"

Suddenly realizing he was talking to someone who could smite him multiple times over, and had reason to, Dean stopped short.

"We are not just our fates, Dean," the other said with a peculiarly calming intonation. "Everyone has a few occasions upon which he can choose something for his own reasons. The important thing is to recognize those instances as what makes a person what he is."

For a moment Dean felt as though he'd met his first real angel—like the kind you hear about when you're a child. The sort that look right through you and don't hate what they see. He had the sudden urge to hold on to Remiel's robe and follow him around for a long while, trying to understand what he was doing right.

"Well, I don't have time to stand around chatting," Remiel said in an abrupt change of tone. "You saw the sort of nonsense the others come up with, those 'Ten.' Truly Dean, I would value some of your common sense to counteract the rest of the council." The human thought he saw a glimmer of humor. "I recommend listening to the psalms being sung around the planet if you have an unquiet heart."

Dean was left all alone in the huge chamber, and he crumpled into the nearest seat.

"Are you ill?" Castiel was there in a moment, accompanied by Balthazar.

"I think rather Dean got an overdose of policy discussion," the latter said knowingly. "I know exactly the antidote: Paris, good wine, and perhaps some dancing."

"You didn't look like you were hating the meeting," Dean observed as he followed the other two out, leaning a little on Cas.

The two angels laughed. "My brother Balthazar has a legendary dislike of meetings. Have you ever seen him enjoy sitting still? There was one time he was particularly bored during one of Raphael's long speeches—"

Dean listened to the two angels he knew best reminisce about Balthazar's pranks as they made way to one of the portals.

"There are two vessels that look likely for me in Europe," Cas said shyly. "I've talked to them both in their dreams, and they're willing. Which would you prefer to negotiate the entry for me?"

This was their first trip out, and Dean had forgotten how much trouble it would be for him to help Cas into every vessel. Or maybe kind if interesting…

Dean looked at one who was a big, dark haired man, possibly Italian, who made his stomach knot up because of a few features in common with Adonis. The other was an Englishman or maybe a Scot, with a frank, friendly smile and a simple comfort about him. He was aware this was some kind of test but it was no contest: "The Brit. We can be two redheads, how's that?"

They went down, Dean basically said "yes" and Castiel slipped into the man's body, who was pleasingly barrel-chested and had strong hands Cas used on him at once.

The three zapped themselves to Paris and he dared to feel a little happy. He was part of the gang now, sort of. These two ridiculously old beings were letting him in on their in-jokes.

"Where are we going? Where's Etienne?" Dean asked.

"Oh that's right, let me tell him what bar to meet us at. He's writing back in our room." Batlhazar paused for a second. "All right, one of our favorites from the 19th century it is."

Both Cas and Dean hesitated a moment, unable to keep from sharing a thought: they were almost completely unable to transmit to each other from long distances anymore. But this other couple, whose bond was intact, obviously could.

"I can tell some serious drinking is In order," Balthazar said in his usual casual manner, and then they were at the bar.

"Dean, what have they done to you?" Etienne embraced him warmly in the middle of a bar, and he flinched at the idea that his marks from Hell were obvious. "You made him stay for an entire council meeting?" he reproached Cas and Dean relaxed. "That wasn't very nice."

"Etienne went once, stood up in the middle of the session saying in his impeccable manners, 'Pardon me, sirs, but I have an urgent engagement,' and has refused to go near the council since."

"Intellectuals and politics don't mix," Etienne said primly. "I have my own ways of helping, and most of them involve being on Earth. Drinking, writing , or preferably, both."

The natural affectionate gestures between the couple seared Dean with an unexpected sense of loss, and when he hid behind his virtues he felt Cas' hurt at being cut off. Being in a relationship was hard work, and he still had so little experience.

"What's good for drinking?" Dean asked. "I need to take a load off."

They led him to a table and plied him with wine and stories about the bar that shared a few bits and boards from when Etienne and Balthazar were in Paris so long ago. Warmed by the drink and their amusing hosts, Cas and Dean found themselves with their arms around each other and laughing loudly above the spirited crowd.

"So back then, guys were, I mean, there were places," Dean began tentatively, still not used to having changed social statuses with his new preference.

Even Cas burst out laughing. "Men have always had their ways," Castiel said with a formal understatement that suddenly reminded Dean of when they were first getting together.

They stared at each other with real smiles mixed with shyness, each expecting the other to make the first move with the desire that was suddenly smoldering between them.

A trio of musicians had been setting up in one corner: an accordionist, a flute player and someone with a small guitar. They began their first song.

"That sounds like, really French," Dean said of the mournful yet cheerful jig.

"That, my good sir, is gypsy music," Etienne said professorially. He shouted out something in an odd language and the men picked up the pace to a danceable tune.

"Come now, Castiel, if you are such an angel of the world, you must be a good dancer," the Spaniard said, holding out his hand.

"Oh, no, not that," the angel said, shrinking into himself with more terror than Dean had ever seen in him.

"You dance, Cas?" There was still so much for them to discover about each other.

Castiel's old scowl was back and Dean wanted to kiss him for it. He hadn't known how much he missed teasing Cas.

"Everyone can dance if they have a soul," Etienne said primly and had the angel on the floor in no time.

"Actually, dancing is more catching, like a cold," Balthazar said to Dean, refilling his glass. "My beloved is a marvelous dancer in more styles than you've ever heard of. Cas can't help but look good alongside him. I'm convinced that Etienne learned his angelic flying skills so quickly because he was already comfortable floating above ground."

They watched the two put on a show for the rest of the guests, the patrons shouting out encouragement to Cas that seemed to both please and unnerve him.

"It's not just you, Dean Winchester," Balthazar said suddenly. "Etienne has a very hard time as well. He can scarcely stand to look at me sometimes because of the part I played—unwillingly—in his long period of suffering. He pours something into notebook after notebook, is all I know."

"I brought it on myself," Dean muttered. "Your guy didn't go to Hell on purpose. And you two led the third front of the apocalypse together. You were awesome."

Balthazar made an impatient gesture. "We've always gotten along, Dean—both irreverent bastards, perhaps-and I'd hate for you to let one day ruin our friendship," the libertine angel said. "You want to know why I endure those insufferable council gatherings? Because I don't trust anyone, not even the best-intentioned attempts to impose order. Neither I nor my partner do. Free spirits think alike, I suppose—"

"Wait, how did you know Etienne was such a good dancer?" Dean asked, as the crowd laughed at the Spaniard's arabesques around the blushing Cas. "The whole time you knew him you were inside him."

"Yes, I experienced his dancing from inside. It was one of those wonderful things we shared—him opening me to something I never would have understood otherwise."

"Do you miss it?" Dean whispered as their companions began weaving their way through the appreciative crowd.

"No, not at all," Balthazar said, surprised. "We're closer now as two than as one."

Dean nodded as Castiel sat down heavily in the seat beside him. "I'm sure I looked as foolish as I felt, but this dancing pastime does make one forget oneself for a moment."

"That's a good thing," Dean said, rubbing Cas' back. "I wouldn't mind trying that sometime."

Their hands laced together, they were shooting back and forth images of the night to come with that new body, when they realized Etienne was raising his voice.

"I don't care how lovely that district is these days—in my day something rather awful happened on the Boulevard Arago!" The Spaniard flounced out and Balthazar shrugged.

"I was suggesting moving to another bar. Something bad happened to him almost everywhere in Paris—only sometimes does he remember."

"I'll go after him," Dean said to the others' surprise. "He doesn't have any reason to be mad at me yet."

He easily traced Etienne to a few streets over. "Hey man, I was hoping you could do me a favor," he said with a sly smile. Seeing the other man look doubtful, he continued, "I know how French people pretend they don't know English when they do. There's something I want to get Cas." He whispered it in the other's ear.

"Mon dieu! I would not know where to find such a thing! In my day everything was accomplished under layers and layers of euphemism. In one of my few encounters with a man before Balthazar, I was always waiting until long after we had our clothes off for the other fellow to sit up and say, 'Romantic encounter? I thought you were trying to sell me something on the black market!'"

They laughed and developed an immediate complicity. "Seeing as I do speak the language, let's find out."

In no time at all the two men had located a place and Dean had chosen the gift.

"There's more to you than meets the eye, Monsieur Winchester," Etienne said, looking Dean up and down with a penetrating gaze.

Dean didn't mind being looked at. "And I'll deny all of it if you tell anyone," he said with a half-smile. "I need to get good and drunk before I have the courage to give Cas this."

"Oh I would pay to see the look on his face," the other man giggled. And then they rejoined their mates in another bar, this with an obviously gay clientele.

They drank and they laughed. The two men made sure they had liquids with some nutrition in them. Dean easily bested everyone else with drinking stories. He was sad to see the evening end, and not just because the couple hosting them in Europe was so much fun.

It was easier to be in a group than alone with Cas.

"Would you, I mean, are you planning on reestablishing yourself in New York?" Castiel asked in a small voice. "Heaven will give you more suitable lodgings should you choose to stay, I hope you know."

"I miss your room," Dean said, suddenly aware of the truth of the statement. Nothing bad had ever happened to him there.

Cas held out a hand, adding some solemnity to the moment as they prepared to go to the room for the first time without Cas beaming him up or carrying him.

Dean had actually been looking forward to being scooped up in those powerful arms.

"You know, humans have a ritual when they're, like, bonded with someone and going home together for the first time," he said slyly.

Cas put on his best "taking notes" face while Dean explained the "carrying over the threshold idea."

"Like this?" The angel held him like before.

"That's pretty close," Dean said, no longer feeling quite the effect now that he was a lot closer to being able to kick Cas' ass, but he still felt very excited about the prospect of being alone with him in that strong new body.

"You don't have to put me down," he whispered when they were in the interdimensional room.

It was awkward having to explain sexual possibilities to the earnest, note-taking face Cas assumed once more, but the wonder that took over his face was priceless.

Making love while being held in the air by Cas' arms was pretty great too.

Risking a few naughty phrases he was careful to make come out in English, not Greek, Dean basked in the feeling of being taken until there was nothing left of him.

* * *

Cas was surprised and relieved to feel Dean cooing in his arms, trying to get closer, closer, the way he did the first time they bonded. This was the Winchester man he remembered—opinionated even in bed, willful, creative—that tender-strong creature he had once thought was a soul, but Cas now knew to be specifically Dean.

His lover seemed to like this vessel. Hopefully Morris would let them use him as many times as he wanted. The finance man from the City of London was a perfect candidate: recently divorced and haunted by the idea that he had never really lived. He had been shocked about the idea of a homosexual tryst with angels but not unpleasantly so.

Cas' awareness was so large it was easy for him to worry about the types of needs a man might have that would never occur to him, even as an angel with a soul. Should he find a book somewhere that would school him in these matters? The angel would never have considered this particular position—most of his fantasies degenerated into a tangle of limbs and longing without stopping at foreplay. All he knew was he wanted to please his lover in the way his simple, angelic being was being pleased—it was practically speaking in tongues he was so happy to be soul-to-soul with his beloved.

At last. That's all that mattered. He probably could be content touching Dean's elbow, but right now Cas' borrowed hands were plucking Enochian syllables from his lover that were unlike any he had ever heard before.

"I'll have him any which way, any which way he wants me," was the thought rebounding in Castiel's mind before he exploded twice, once on each plane, both times with joy.

* * *

They lay contentedly together for a long time before Dean finally asked, "What was that you were saying? Any what way?"

Castiel nervously scanned his partner's face for evidence that he had overheard all the rest of his thoughts while they were together, but Dean simply looked irresistible and Cas kissed him for a long while before remembering the question.

"I was just thinking I'd stand on my head if you wanted me to, if it gave you pleasure." Cas' hesitant words halted when he saw Dean's scrutiny. "Is that possible?" the angel protested. "it doesn't seem like it would be very considerate of the vessel."

"No, Thursday, that's not what I had in mind." Dean saw that the old nickname had the desired effect and fetched his things from across the room. "I bought you a present."

"No one has ever given me a present," Castiel said, and Dean was distracted from his mission for a moment by the total purity of the angel in front of him. There was so much to show him…

"I think you're really going to enjoy this," he purred as his lover unwrapped-

"'Bondage 101 Set'?" Cas was turning over the leather whip and restraints in his hands. "Is this for cattle herding?"

"No!" Dean grabbed the articles from him and tried to demonstrate, acting out both parts—the whip-wielder and the avid lash recipient. "It's for role-playing. It's a couples thing. You know, couples do things together, they lie around naked together, they have nicknames and sometimes they play games."

"I don't know how to play games," Cas objected, obviously beginning to feel out of his element.

"Evidently one part of you does," Dean smirked, pointing at an obvious interest in Cas' borrowed lap.

Watching the perpetually earnest Cas peering at his own unexpected tumescence was too much for Dean, and he had to reward what he hoped would be a mutually enjoyable scratching of this S/M itch of his.

"There's a lot of things I want you to do," Dean said, enumerating them as he delivered a paralyzing amount of pleasure to the relevant spots. Pulling his lover back from the brink, he placed the whip in Cas' hand. "You know you want to," he whispered, stretching out his naked body for maximum effect.

Castiel looked at the implement as if he had no idea how it got there. He looked at his lover, whom he wanted to give any sort of pleasure he could ever want.

Except this.

The angel sat down heavily on one end of the couch he'd brought there for Dean. He'd been struggling with the awareness that he probably would have to do another "treatment." Just as last time, he would reproduce the complete isolation of Hell and then reassure Dean that he was there for him, that Castiel would always be there.

He just hadn't been planning on it running over into their romantic intimacy.

To Cas' mind, beginning the hated "role-playing" as Dean called it was about as sensual as giving him a blood transfusion.

Fatally, he told his lover so.

"I have needs!" Dean exclaimed bitterly. "You're supposed to share things with me, explore new things, get off on the same things as me! Would you rather I go somewhere else?"

The words were designed to wound, but not any farther than breaking the skin. Castiel was in a rage in a second, towering over Dean on the angelic plane as he seldom did.

"Is this how it's going to be? I changed everything that I am for you and you're going to be passing your ass around Heaven AND Earth to torment me for my fatal lack of perversity? Well, I'm here to tell you, Dean Winchester, that maybe I don't love you enough, if that's what passes for love among depraved sluts such as yourself—"

Castiel was so furious he wasn't aware of the whip being pressed into his hand.

"Maybe you'll think twice about giving it out to all and sundry if I make you feel who every inch of that body belongs to—I made you into a man-loving half-angel, all-whore and I want everyone to know—"

The lashes that had been crackling off the length of leather died away in that empty room, and the angel stared at it as if he were holding a snake. He threw the article far from him and did something Dean didn't even think he could do: he retched.

"Oh, don't stop, Cas, that was just right," Dean said, openly reflecting his enjoyment.

Until the sobs started.

"Wait a minute, baby, don't take it like that," Dean tried to soothe the angel. "This is the way it's supposed to be. You get into it, do things you wouldn't normally do in the heat of the moment. A lot of people find it therapeutic. Plenty of chicks I was with—"

"I am not a chick," Castiel replied coldly. "Nor a man. Perhaps you should find one who can understand this—interest—that is apparently peculiar to humans." He was pulling clothes on his vessel as if wanting to shield the stranger from this ugly end to the beautiful evening he'd promised the lonely man.

"That's not true," Dean objected, feeling unpleasant reminders of his one-sided frotteurism sessions with Cas early on. He got dressed as well. "At that club in New York I saw plenty of angels, and they were all-"

"Not me. They were all not me. I trust you can find your own way back to wherever it is you long to be-whether you prefer the brand of not-me that is an actual person or merely an imaginary friend, I care not."

The roleplaying kit shoved in his hands, Dean was shoved out the door.

Alone in their respective rooms, the two had more in common than they thought:

They wept.


	26. Chapter 26

Dean quickly came to the conclusion that no game was important enough to lose Cas over.

Just being dangled over the chasm of loneliness that opened up without his lover had him crawling back within two days.

Cas' cold look at Dean begging at his feet corrected that posture in a jiffy, too.

As long as he was willing to stand on his own two feet, Dean found that his lover had been looking for kink-free variety to please him.

Cas offered to take him using the vessel of his choice, any night of the week. Part of the enjoyment was shivering together before the portals of heaven and considering the possibilities. Or better yet, walking around on earth and discussing who they both might like the angel to be for a night. When the two of them negotiated together it was very easy to find a match.

It was pretty fantastic, Dean thought, wriggling in the new arms of the evening. It was all Cas, of course it was the Cas he felt safe enough with to melt into his very being. But it was equally true that the sweet angel was making Dean's body bend before stranger after stranger—hell, he was right in the middle of it doing the bending. If Cas could grasp how incredibly naughty this was, and Dean doubted it, he seemed to think it was better than darker alternatives.

"Are you happy, Kitten?" Castiel asked after one strenuous night. The angel had also accepted switching back to the original nickname with no protest.

"Mmmm," Dean purred, wanting to linger in the feeling of being nothing but a light, contented fur pressed against Cas' body du jour, this time a sleek, strapping young Japanese man who may or may not be some kind of criminal, judging from his tattoos.

"Yes," he moaned, and it was hard to tell whether it was an expression of overall contentment or simply agreement with what his lover was doing to him once again.

Actually it was more the latter.

All of the angels had some responsibility in Heaven, but Etienne and Dean were the only two Nephilim who refused to take a place in the heavenly bureaucracy. As two of the key players in the New Era, they hoped they could retire indefinitely, the older man to make up for his many years of suffering, and Dean to avoid screwing anything else up.

They spent a lot of time flitting about the globe together, and both of their partners seemed relieved that this new friendship had sprung up. Dean taught the other man all the million things about the modern world he didn't know, and the Spaniard was trying to teach Dean French and Spanish at the same time, which unfortunately produced some hilarious mishmash that they were now trying to untangle.

All that was true.

They also spent a lot of time talking about Hell. And fate and shitty lives and a gut-level distrust of Heaven, but mostly Hell.

If the man who spent over a century there involuntarily hadn't brought it up, Dean never would have asked, though he was dying to compare notes.

"You know I could make things very difficult for you with your mate, were I to tell him certain things," Etienne said one day conversationally as he looked up from his journal-one of their routines was for the writer to sit in a café and scribble while the American people-watched.

Dean started at the threat.

"What you haven't said, mon ami, I've surmised. You miss Hell. So I know you will not be so foolish as to tell my partner that sometimes I do as well."

The dark features took on that fierce look they sometimes attained.

"Tiny, you don't have to try and make me feel better about being fucked up." Dean had a hard time saying 'Etienne,' and the nickname had arisen out of the other man's slender frame. Now Balthazar was calling his partner that as well.

"No, it would do me good to say it, I think." He had a pronounced accent in English that gave Dean a secret thrill because it reminded him of Adonis.

Actually there was a lot of his old lover in this new friend—both totally well-educated, multi-lingual, didn't mind explaining all the things Dean missed by not going to school. Dean liked just following him around and letting him talk the right language, order the food they could eat, choose the wine, explain the plays he dragged him to, show him the different strains of history that made up the present.

In return, Dean pointed out demons and monsters. That was as much for his inexperienced friend's safety as his one duty to his old hunter friends. The ex-hunter was one of the only ones around who had a chance at picking out Hell's new possession and subterfuge techniques. Though he hated to pretend to be useful, Dean gladly kept one eye on the lookout for anything that might help his brother, uncle, and all the other Cause members he owed so much.

"When they really take an interest in you in Hell, it's because they've found someone who is so mixed-up, gullible or desperate that his hope, his love, something pure left in him, can be coaxed like a hothouse plant. The highest aspiration they're capable of is make these scraps grow into a hybrid made of all the base suffering and fear that are the only things they have to work with in that place."

Dean was all ears. No one would talk to him like this.

"Demons are lonely and desperately bored, I'm sure you noticed." He glanced at the American. "Perhaps you had less time to think about these matters, but they so much want the very things that cannot survive in Hell—soft, kind, noble, beautiful things that they couldn't even properly touch or see in their real forms."

"So the ones like us, that get a little too good at playing the game—"

"The only closeness those bastards are capable of." Etienne spit elegantly on the sidewalk. "The demon who destroyed me probably loved me." He shook his head at Dean's incredulity. "Really. They need us and they're frightened of what they find in us. It's a great weakness of theirs, really."

While the hunter that still lived in him filed away this potentially useful fact, the emotional mess he mostly was these days grabbed his companion's hand over the table. "Then that doesn't mean I'm somehow sicker than everyone else—"

"It means you're irresistible to them because you do have good left in you, and you're vulnerable enough to fall for all their ploys. There's something very, very seductive about having that one tiny genius of theirs trained on you." The writer's slim, ink-stained hand grasped his warmly. "They can read the darkest parts of you like a book. And don't ever let anyone tell you that doesn't feel good from time to time."

Dean blushed and left his hand in the thinner one. "Have you learned how to heal yourself yet?"

"Heal—you mean my body? I've not had any injuries of note since the battle, and Balthazar took care of those for me."

The American leaned forward over the small table. "I've gotten damn good at it." He leaned back and waited for the reaction.

To Dean's surprise, the other man merely looked at him in the eyes for a long moment.

The Spaniard grasped the tiny coffee cup he handled so gracefully and downed the rest of the contents before placing it carefully back in the saucer. He threw some money on the table.

"Show me," he said.

In a moment they were in Dean's New York apartment.

"This is all warded six ways from Sunday," Dean said as they walked through the various devices. "If anyone, but especially Cas saw this—let's just say I've been picking up every bit of written Enochian I can find to keep that from happening."

"I didn't know you were this handy," Etienne observed, looking at machines and parts strewn across the living room.

"The only parts of me with any smarts," Dean said, shaking his hands at the wrists. "Motorcycles, cars, self-whipping machines—if I fiddle around with them long enough, they'll work eventually."

He took off his shirt with a grin and demonstrated, strangely excited to be sharing this private perversion with someone who wasn't yelling at him about it.

His visitor watched for a while with those dark, impenetrable eyes, adding a new element to the focusing pleasure of the lash, and then suddenly the machine went off.

"Damn thing, still doesn't work right," Dean grumbled, making to get up.

"Stay there," the accented voice barked.

Etienne's finger was on the button. He chose one of the other floggers from the rack on the wall, letting his observer suffer a little, waiting to see what his fate would be.

When he turned around, there was nothing left of the graceful, cultured man in a linen suit except the suit.

He lashed at Dean with a frenzy and then stopped. He smiled at the pleading to continue.

"It wouldn't do to go home with blood on my clothes. Do you have anything I could change into?"

Dean's mouth curved up. None of it was the right size, since his imagined tormenters were always much larger, but they soon found something that would work.

An hour later, Dean was reduced to nothing.

It felt so good. Nothing can't disappoint.

"Thanks, man," he said to the small individual standing nearby, who had known just when to stop.

"No, thank you," Etienne said in that accent. "I've a few centuries' worth of darkness needing to get out, and I've been trying to leech it off with writing, obviously without much effect."

They sat on the floor together after Dean healed himself, drinking orange juice while the writer translated some of the more salacious bits from his journal for their mutual enjoyment.

"A privacy sigil was the first thing I learned in written Enochian," the Spaniard confided. "My intent was to write all of the novels I started in my head as a way of staving off madness, but instead, this filth comes out."

He regarded Dean's downcast eyes. "Perhaps filth isn't the right word," he said softly, tipping up the red head with a commanding finger. "I very much enjoy being damned with you for a little while, my friend. Perhaps we both need an occasional outlet, now that we have tasted of the forbidden fruits of Hell. Our lives allow us to enjoy all the good things our partners want to give us—everything except this one thing."

"I don't know, Tiny, you didn't see Balthazar before. He was the life of the party, but he was in his own kind of Hell without you." Dean began picking up their mess.

"I don't mean to minimize his pain," Etienne nodded sadly. "We fight—oh, what those blank walls of our room have heard! My Balthazar was always different from the blank-faced angels, I think. You should have seen the uniform he appeared to me in, the first time I saw him in my dream! He thought it would best explain his mission to me, but it was fairly obvious he was much more than a uniform, though the buttons and braid suited him just fine."

Etienne's face became serious again. "My lover went through his own version of Hell, and once you've been in that black place, it's a knowledge that's always ready to take over your awareness." Then he smiled. "These sort of games are definitely not outside his experience, but they do little for him. He is not a man—he craves me to punish him in some more essential way for his leaving me in Hell. This is too easy."

"I don't think Cas will ever understand," Dean complained. "This, this thing eats away at the back of my mind."

"Then I must do a very good job the next time I drop by. Worm." The perfect white teeth smiled in the tan face.

Dean threw his arms around the other man's ankles and was allowed to stay in the posture as long as he liked.

"What did you and Etienne do today?" Castiel asked.

"I took him to New York. He puts up a good front, but I think he still gets overstimulated by that much modern life." Dean passed one of his angelic wings over his lover. "You look tired, Thursday. Do you want to stay in?"

The angel leaned into the touch. "I always feel better when you are near. The world is just as troublesome to keep on track as it ever was, and now every bit of death or suffering resonates in my soul."

Dean held his lover close. He knew there were many reasons for the always-embattled Cas to struggle, and he didn't want to be one more. "I have a surprise planned that will make you feel good."

With a slight tension in his voice, the angel said, "You don't have to do anything special on my account."

"Come with me."

In a few moments they were in New Jersey. "Oh, no, Dean, I don't think this will work."

"it didn't work for you before because I wasn't there to be part of the envesseling process," Dean replied. "Thanks, Jimmy."

Cas' old vessel stood at the door to his apartment, looking as disheveled as ever. "I've been kind of wanting one last tour with an angel inside," he admitted. "Everything got crazy and maybe I didn't end things too well."

"You won't regret it," Dean assured him, and with his help, the angel slipped easily into his old vessel.

"I can't help it, I've missed you wearing this face," Dean said, hugging Cas, who seemed surprised at his fervor.

They had a simple evening. Together, they flew to the top of the Empire State Building and listened to the Enochian streaming all over the world. Castiel explained some of the obscure stuff with Dean wound in his arms.

"Let's go," Dean prompted, and in a moment they were back in their room.

"Are you sure you didn't want to go somewhere else?" Cas asked.

"Yes, I know what I want." Dean was already unwrapping this body that meant "Cas" more than any other.

In a carefully guarded part of his mind, he thanked Etienne over and over for the bloodletting, or misery-letting or whatever he did to him today. Because for the first time since returning from Hell this time, Dean could simply be with his mate like before. Enjoy him without any extra distractions.

When they climaxed that night, the flesh in between didn't matter. They were one.

"I don't know if Jimmy will be so amenable every night," the angel said with a trace of sadness to that pleasingly growly voice.

"This is something that was left unfinished for us, sleeping together with you in this body, but who you're wearing doesn't matter to me that much," Dean said.

And he meant it.

Mostly.

"Our partners have become fast friends," Balthazar said to his twin one day. "I, for one, am very relieved that my little bookworm is learning to go about the world from someone who knows how to handle himself."

"Dean now asks me the most surprising questions about ancient history. Your lover has him reading books, Proust of all things." Balthazar guffawed at that image. "I asked him if we was enjoying it, and he said, 'No, but I know it's good for me." Castiel paused. "You don't think they're getting too close, do you?"

His brother laughed broadly and slapped him on the back. "You know nothing of men's tastes, Cas. Has Dean ever once asked you to choose a vessel that wasn't well-built if not downright frightening?"

"No, not at all," the other angel replied.

"Humans have preferences, and I'm afraid my dear waif is not to your lover's taste."

"You know about these matters," Cass said with some relief. "They seem to understand each other so well, I forget that humans tend to. Dean was always self-conscious about his lack of education, so I am glad for him to be enriching himself." He thought no more about it.

"Let's see how well you've absorbed last night's lesson," Etienne snapped at Dean.

"Role-playing isn't supposed to be real work," Dean complained for the hundredth time. He had always hated almost all reading, and this Proust guy Tiny picked out was so horribly boring that getting through one page was torture.

Etienne was a genius at domination.

The GED-holding American had always known he lacked even the basic education most of his peers had, but meeting Adonis had showed him that the intimidation he felt around book-smart people could be turned into something pleasurable. He loved the lessons—whether academic or otherwise—his old lover had imparted with a professorial air. And now he thoroughly enjoyed the brilliant Spaniard regaling him with all his learning.

Listening to Etienne talk about classical history that every idiot knew in the 19th century made him feel wonderfully inferior.

Dean was made to stew in his own juice, tied spread-eagled to the cage against one wall, until he was able to come up with a couple salient points from his reading last night. "You didn't even read Proust when you were alive, did you?" he asked when the first cold metal chain snaked across his bare chest as a reward.

"No, but I'm making up for lost time, and so should you. A gentleman should be well-read." The second chain slid across his belly and Dean shivered. "And a concubine should read what his gentleman hasn't the time to read."

This day the Spaniard enumerated all of the reasons why Dean should be ashamed of lolling about all day as the kept creature belonging to someone who actually did things.

It was seriously hot, to think of himself like that, being maintained by Cas, though Dean gambled for everything he needed. In the ways that counted, however, the ex-hunter was completely dependent on the angel. How Etienne turned a source of real self-hatred into a turn-on, he couldn't tell, but bit by bit, that's what they did on their afternoons together—some dark but necessary alchemy.

The other half of the equation was benefiting, too. Dean was grateful that he could receive this part of the cultured, intelligent man that came roaring out in the sound-proofed apartment. Etienne had a serious dark streak, and he seemed to grow three times his size sometimes while cursing and burning and stringing him up by his heels.

On this day, Dean was given the opportunity to beg very specifically for what he wanted, and Etienne gave him a crumb or two before leaving him alone a long while. Dean had felt him leave the apartment this time.

The other man was gone a long time, and Dean started to wish he hadn't insisted upon using S/M implements that had been reinforced with sigils against his angelic strength. It was a testament to his trust in his new friend that the hunter who always had three exits scoped out from any room would make himself so vulnerable.

Two men appeared in the room.

"I hope you don't mind my bringing a trusted friend to see you at your best." Etienne was laughing in that scary way at what Dean knew to be panic on his face. This apartment was his haven! What if it got back to Cas! "This is Argus. We were in Limbo together."

"Oh, but you've been doing it all wrong," the stocky man said in an Eastern European accent.

Shortly, he was showing them both how it was done.

Etienne had many rules he'd imposed since the beginning—he himself would remain fully clothed and usually Dean was left wearing a scrap as well; neither of them touched each other with so much as a graze of the skin; his victim was not allowed to touch himself; and none of their games involved any of Dean's intimate zones.

Either Argus hadn't heard of these rules or he had his own.

Etienne watched, very interested indeed, from his usual distance.

"it's not cheating! We're not having sex! Not by any definition!" was the thought that clanged around in his deliciously empty brain from time to time.

It worked out perfectly: Etienne's old friends from Limbo were also having a hard time suppressing all the horrors they'd experienced. Without an angel to protect them, as the Spaniard had in Balthazar, Heaven was showing itself to be quite nervous about these reconstituted souls it finally let out of Hell. They expected retribution, or something, Dean thought.

"No, we know too much," Argus said to him one day as they shared a companionable drink after a mutually beneficial session. "And most of us, unlike your friend, got to Hell on our own steam."

Dean started.

The man laughed. "Now you're afraid of me, after what you just let me do? Six hundred years ago I was a highway robber. You're going to pass judgment on me, who was disintegrated from my torments? I'd like to think if there's still someone I have to answer to, it's not some pansy ass who likes frills and laces and needs to be taken over my knee." He slapped Dean's ass playfully.

Dean had always had a secret interest in cross-dressing, but would never have suggested it on his own. Argus threw the odds and ends at him one day and said, "You should dress for what you're good for."

He didn't have to ask twice.

"Nah, man, I never was very smart, and I know less than ever as the years go on," Dean said, and it didn't feel like a terrible fate at the moment.

"I'm afraid you need to unhand that ass, because Dean needs to get it to the restaurant where we're meeting out boyfriends," Etienne said at the door.

When the visitor left, they changed all the sigils, as they did every time the other ex-Limbo-dwellers came, singly or in groups.

They arrived separately at the tapas bar in Spain, where the angels were already waiting. Dean tried his still mixed-up Spanish on a few of the bar patrons and laughed at his teacher's admonishing him about verb tenses. Then Etienne dragged him up to the jukebox to choose a song to dance to.

"If I didn't trust your judgment more than mine, I'd say there was something going on between them," Cas grumbled.

"When did I ever say that? If they're not sleeping together yet they will be soon," the other angel said placidly.

"But, but you—how can you sit there like it's nothing!" Castiel hissed angrily.

"As I recall, I said that my partner was not your partner's type. And he's not. Dean likes more powerful men. He could snap Etienne in half with one hand. Which is why I think they just need to get whatever it is out of their systems and then we'll hear no more about it." Balthazar finished with one of his more dazzling smiles.

"This is the love I heard you moan about for decades," Cas threw back.

"This is the love I want to go on for millennia," his twin said with quiet emphasis. "Etienne was almost totally inexperienced when I met him, and I've had thousands of years to play the field. The stupidest thing I could do right now would be to come down as a possessive prick."

He raised an eyebrow at his companion, who was watching the two men dancing with a rising fury. "How are things between you, these days?"

"I had thought they'd never been better," Castiel muttered.

"A sure sign that you are the main course and our men are only nibbling at an occasional side dish."

Their partners came back bearing glasses of chilled gazpacho, exactly the sort of liquid nutrition their bodies preferred.

"Try this, Cas, it's amazing."

The angel allowed a small amount of the tomato mixture to be tipped into his mouth. He caught someone else at the bar looking at the show of affection jealously. It was true, he had never had this, none of it, before Dean came into his life. Etienne was a fine man and his twin's partner. If there was one safe flirtation he could allow Dean, it was this one.

He, too, wanted this relationship to last a very long time, just as it was.


	27. Chapter 27

"How is that even possible?" Valac tossed the spreadsheets aside. "If Hell were suddenly doing things so well as to cause a large uptick in our market stats, wouldn't I be aware that the numbskulls surrounding me had been replaced by intelligent creatures?"

The accountant-demon fetched the papers again. "But sir, it's right here. Almost every day for two months. I didn't see it at first because it's only this one measure and none of the others," he traced one line spiking far above other colored lines on a graph, "but you can tell—our side has had a noticeable gain during this time."

"I wouldn't put it past you, Aldous, to cook the books a little, like you did that time to convince me that you deserved a promotion." The head demon narrowed his eyes at the underling.

"No sir," Aldous took a discreet step back. "Don't you think it's significant that our stocks would be up but there is no appreciable difference in the number of souls we're taking in?"

"All right, I'll play. Have you been able to determine the source of the gains?" Valac was bored, and bookkeeping was his personal form of torture—and now that he was in charge, he tried to be sure he was the one doing the torturing.

"If I may, sir." Aldous pointed to the screen that was Hell's real-time map of earthly evil. It wasn't as accurate as the sort of thing their opposition possessed, but then, there was no power structure in Hell designed to keep the whole truth from everyone, so sometimes they came out ahead. At least, that's what Valac's sycophants assured him. He still hadn't learned how to use all the gadgets installed by his technology-loving predecessor, and was too embarrassed to ask for more demonstrations. "We've traced it to right there." He pointed to a red, pulsing dot in the northeastern seaboard.

"That's the club in New York, you dimwit! Now that we've nearly perfected the short-term paralysis of angelic faculties with that infernal techno music, any angel can be pleasurably relieved of his power for a little while, and then leave as if nothing has happened. Or so they think. Perhaps they've had more clients than usual."

"No, if my illustrious superior would look closer, the club is on the west side. This is the east side, farther south."

One of the benefits of having attained his current position, Valac thought, was not having to censor himself in front of anyone. Still, he sat there wordlessly with his feet on his desk for some minutes, feeling the lackey's nervousness growing at the unusual silence.

First Avenue.

His old plaything's hideout.

"And what, pray tell, has Winchester been doing to so generously improve our portfolio?" he asked softly.

The accountant was looking as though his plan to curry favor was backfiring in ways he didn't understand. "I can't see. None of us can. It's not on the map, as you can tell." He zoomed in closer, and where they could see other people beating their spouses and pilfering from the till and otherwise scoring one for the team, Dean's apartment registered as a big nothing.

"These angels and quasi-angels and whatnot, they have excellent technology for subterfuge." Again, the quiet voice. "Find out what they're doing."

The minion quivered. "I only keep the books, sir, follow the market, I don't—"

"You or someone else find out what the blazes the Winchester man is doing!"

The roar seemed to put things back on normal footing, and the accountant scurried out.

Valac sat very still for a long time. Memos went unanswered. He delegated interrogations and torture sessions to other demons. For some reason, everything hung on what the reconnaissance team turned up, and he couldn't concentrate on anything else.

"Sir," Aldous came in, bowing and scraping, with two of the demons better trained as earthly operatives.

"What is it: Winchester's joined our cause and no one bothered to tell me?" Somewhere in his entrails, Valac knew it was nothing so simple.

"Yes, sir, perhaps that is it." Aldous nodded at the larger demon, who took over.

"The old Limbo dwellers have been visiting him a lot."

"And what have they been up to?"

"No good, sir," the pointed smile assured him. "Once they're out of the range of whatever spells or things he's using to shut us out, the Limbo souls positively reek of darkness."

"But they don't show up on the scanner," Valac said with a certain dread.

The demon's face collapsed in consternation. "It only lasts for a short period of time, sir. Then their energy levels are back to normal."

The fist descending upon the desk with a bang even surprised Valac a little, and it was his fist. "You do see what they're doing, all of you, or do I need to spell this out for the nincompoops I'm condemned to spend eternity with?"

It was a rage so pure the head demon felt like he was floating.

"They're having their own nasty little tea parties, their own homegrown torture sessions, and then they leave and go about their business—because only foolish angels would think you get the Hell out of a soul once it's set in like a stain. Yes, they're getting together for what they need, what they learned they needed here."

"Isn't that good—we can win them back, turn them into agents," Aldous had the idiocy to say.

"We will never get them back as long as they are getting their itch scratched somewhere else!" His hands were closing on the accountant's throat. "They go so far as to think that they can get flayed open at noontime and be right as rain by two o'clock? That torment leaves no scar?"

He dropped the demon right where he was, surveying with some satisfaction that the throttling would leave a nice scar.

"Well, don't just stand there, you idiots!"

The other two demons looked at him dumbly.

"This is an assault on the entire integrity of our product!"

"But sir, isn't torment without consequence what we advertise to the angels in their club?" Aldous gasped from the floor.

Valac surveyed the demon like an insect he was considering squashing. "And you expect truth in advertising? WHEN OUR SIDE INVENTED IT?"

The head demon held out his foot. "Kindly clean my shoe before you leave. And sweep up that mess."

"Um, sir, sorry, what are we to do?"

"Oh right, I suppose I didn't say. You are to infiltrate their little circle and find out exactly how they're doing what they're doing, and then we'll show them one better. You can't out-Hell, Hell, after all, it would ruin our reputation to have such competition."

"And, a thousand pardons, how will we do that?" the minion asked.

Valac smiled "We'll show them that they've been working for us all along without realizing it. That they never left."

When the toadies had gone, Valac did something he seldom did: he barricaded the door, shuttered all the monitors, answered no calls, admitted no distractions.

The Winchester man. It would have been impolitic to start a war, so soon after the apocalypse and right after his ascending to power, over one man.

That's all he was. It was a matter of pride, the demon told himself. Getting that "yes" from Dean Winchester had been a stunning coup, and he had devolved so prettily. Dean was now forever broken enough to remain useless for any cause, and very likely to drag anyone he met into that persistent Extra Deadly of his. It was a loss, certainly, to let that ass go, but Hell was nothing if not a sea of asses.

The image of some other hand tightening a network of chains around that body was so intolerable Valac smashed some of his furniture.

"All right in there, sir?" the voice squeaked outside the door.

No. No, he was not all right.

Why should that whore of a Winchester get to swan around groveling before all comers as if darkness didn't come with a price tag?

Valac didn't think so. That's not at all what their sessions had done to him.

The lead demon was going to show Dean what the half-angel, all-delight had done to him—this boiling feeling that was slightly different than damnation itself.

Damn it.

It would most assuredly leave a scar.

* * *

"Excuse me, ma'am, could I have something to drink?" Dean ventured from the position where his body was a maze of laces and clamps and pins.

"You don't deserve so much as a sip, because you can't learn to drink like a lady," the woman from Limbo, Adeline, barked at him. "It's pinkies out, or I'll break 'em again."

"Actually, Adeline, our specific constitutions require a lot of liquid," Etienne said from his chair. He seemed to get a special enjoyment out of the female Limbo dwellers when they came by to loose their memories of Hell on his friend.

"Oh, of course, so sorry." The woman was all kindness as she fetched a teacup of orange juice and loosed one of the man's hands. "Now do it right this time," she said in a harsh tone.

Dean secretly enjoyed having the women beat some kind of femininity into him, as well.

After it was over, Dean and Etienne retraced the sigils and then sat around having a drink after the release of the day. The Spaniard was always impeccably dressed unless he decided to join in—though these days he spent much of his time observing and writing. Dean was still wearing the clothes Adeline had picked out for him. The filmy chiffon slid over the contours of his runner's body as a reminder of something demeaning and sensual clinging to his every move.

He fantasized about wearing one of these garments under his regular clothes and Cas discovering it, and beating him for it.

As if reading his mind, Etienne laid his hand on his arm. "Has your alarmingly spotty education introduced you to the myth of Persephone?"

Dean snorted, and the last year of weirdness fell away. "I've lived more mythology from all over the world than you ever read in some book," he snorted, getting up to swagger a little to his bookcase. Rather than fight over who got Dad's notes, Sam had them digitized and the real ones put in a safety deposit box. He selected one of the plain brown volumes and shoved it in front of his friend's nose. "It's a whole variant of myths having to do with deals. Remember what I told you about deal and demons? People try to make things work by dividing up their time between one thing and another usually. It's when they try to welch out on the bargain that things always go south. Dad found some demigod once that was trapped in Newark for part of the year. You haven't been there, but it's not a place most people would choose to be. Anyway, some well-meaning hunter got it in her head to free the demigod because she happened to hear it weeping and wailing. Well, she should have just ignored it, because she set it free and all hell broke loose on the demigod for reneging on the deal. The details are a little scanty in these notes, but I think it was actually kind of like that time that Sam and I negotiated between Mr. and Mrs. Rain: a little symbolic this and that in the right place, and order is restored."

He looked up from his book. "What?"

"You do know many, many things no one does, amigo, important things. And you know how to use them to save people's lives. You are very good at these monsters and things." He gestured to the line of notebooks. "Do you not miss it?"

"I was handed a life, I made as much of it as I could, which wasn't a lot, and now I'm doing things my way. I don't owe anybody anything. Except," he stretched out on the carpet. "Could you tighten the laces by putting your foot on my back like you do?"

The Spaniard did as he was asked without requiring any begging for a change, and a slight sadness to his movements. This had long since stopped being about filling whatever new organ he'd grown in Hell with its quota of screams. It was impossible for anyone with a soul to look away from Dean's predicament. Here was this vibrant man, so vital that he'd strode across the universe's stage, fighting against all direction simply because something in him had its own compass.

Life had worn marks into the American, just as it had on all of them. This much did not surprise Etienne when he was first alive. But Dean would not acknowledge that all that energy of his, all that instinct and skill, was still his lot, no matter how many fancy bows he had others tie it in. He was trying to stay in a state of suspended animation, so deep was his distrust of himself. That was what made it so poignant to see his knotted-up powerlessness reflected in the games they played.

Etienne finished tightening the stays and left his hand on the cincher's brocade for a moment, in violation of his usual rules. Dean was a lovely man, physically, but it was his peculiar mixture of anguish and hope that the writer in him found irresistible.. Or maybe it was the part of him marred by Hell. Etienne cared more than he dared to show, knowing that Dean would shut him out the way he was trying to do with his mate.

"My sweet," he said gently.

"Mmm?" Dean was enjoying the initial restriction upon his lungs, as usual.

"I brought up Persephone because I wondered if you realized that you, yourself, have created such a 'deal' with our pastimes here." His slim hand took in all the implements they and their visitors used on Dean with such enjoyment. "It is important not to mix the planes, so to speak: you have a good life with Cas, perhaps because you have this other life here. Persephone would have been happy, could she have played the rules and stayed in the underworld for her assigned portion of the year."

Etienne studied the handsome features standing out against the embroidered corset to see if he was getting through. "Don't reproach your partner. for not being able to understand. Besides, that leaves it to me to truss you up as I please."

They spent the last few minutes of the day undoing all the healing Dean had just done on himself, but still he appeared home and was waiting for Cas with his smooth skin just waiting to be discovered under the usual blue jeans and t-shirt.

"How was work today?" he asked the angel who appeared in their special place.

Cas' virtues looked tired. "Not so good. I may be on assignment for the next little while. Hell seems to be trying its best to get underfoot again."

Dean whispered some Enochian psalms he knew his lover to be partial to, and saw them take effect. "What vessel will you be using? One that makes me want to visit you for a little action, I hope?"

"Actually, I've not been told all the particulars, but it is a secret mission. Only the few of us assigned will know about it. During this time, I will not be able to be in contact with you."

Dean's face caved in and this surprised the angel. "Balthazar is also going, so you have Etienne to keep you company, so you will not be lonely," he said with a bit of an edge.

A flash of guilt at just how Etienne comforted him did nothing to make him feel better. "Okay, Cas, I know you are a valuable asset and everything. I'll just miss you, is all."

"Who would you like me to choose as a vessel for our last time before I leave?" Castiel asked.

"I don't care," Dean said.

The random man Castiel chose was merely an obstacle that Dean quickly slid his way around to get to the essence of the angel he loved, for that essence to shape his own body.

"I'll be fine, Dean, it won't be for long," the angel kissed him lightly all over his face.

"I know," he said from where he was curled as small as he could in the borrowed arms. Dean was more afraid of himself not being fine, and that made him feel even more rotten.

After Castiel left, Etienne and Dean spent even more time together, with Balthazar gone on the mission as well. Without the angels they depended on, both men threw themselves into their little games more than ever. There were a lot of people from Limbo, so there was always someone lined up with some new depravity. But for the next two weeks, they always had more than one at a time in the apartment, often many at a time, meaning that the whipping sometimes attained an exalted kind of mob mentality.

Dean loved being the center of attention. From right there in the middle of all those insults and tools of pain, nothing could hurt him.

He was a beautiful nothing.

His Spanish friend sometimes worried that things were getting out of hand. All these souls he knew well were pleased to have a second lease on life and thus were quite busy, but many were coming back more and more frequently to play this game that was increasingly serious.

"I'm in love with him, but the rest?" Etienne asked himself. Why did they all feel this uncontrollable urge to bring this man low and then keep him there under their boot? Balthazar had mentioned that Dean had some condition, acedia, and if he ever felt himself becoming "dried out" or unhappy, Etienne should say something, in case he was catching it.

The slim hand discreetly balled up into a fist as he watched. It was getting harder and harder for him to obey the rules he imposed on himself out of respect for Balthazar. Etienne wasn't sure which would be worse—making love to Dean or using his hands less kindly on him?

* * *

Castiel stood next to Balthazar and two non-bonded angels with extensive military experience. "We have a list of which angels frequent this—establishment. Why do we not apprehend them and school them in the new ways? Anyone who is willing to let one of those vermin near them its obviously very lonely. Our brothers could find a mate."

Balthazar shook his head gently. "My twin, what they do with the demons is hardy the real concern."

"For all we know they're sleeper agents, perhaps unbeknownst to themselves, who have received some secret instruction to undermine Heaven," said Dominic, one of the warriors."

"But why is this club such a threat now, when such places have always sprung up from time to time?

Castiel smoldered briefly at the thought that Dean was once there, and there were horrible pictures all around the universe to prove it. The snapshots of Dean wearing nothing but a pink maribou and flecks of blood, along with the most contented expression he'd ever seen on his lover, made Castiel want to destroy something The club would do..

"And if it is a threat, let's raze it to the ground." That would make him feel a bit better actually.

"Can you turn your emotions off for one second?" Gregorious, the other soldier, snapped. "We all know that some angels have fraternized, but even beyond the music they've developed recently, certain things have been noticed."

* * *

Feeling rather shaky with the anchor of his life gone for an indefinite period of time, Dean headed to New York to ready his apartment for what he hoped would be very structuring visits that day. To his surprise, Etienne was already waiting there.

Dressed head to toe in white.

"Is it Halloween?" Dean asked listlessly. "I thought I was the one who was supposed to be dressed up like a sissy."

The Spaniard frowned. "This, my dear philistine, is a fencing ensemble, and you are to instruct me in the art of war."

To the utterly blank expression that greeted this news, Etienne took one of the fencing foils from the couch and made a few flourishes. "Every gentleman could at least fake his way through a few moves. And a fake gentleman, such as I, was doubly good at faking. Besides, it's like dancing."

"I like our other games better," Dean said with an edge in his voice. "Don't you worry about what they're up to on this secret assignment? We both know Heaven is if anything more devious than Hell." His face brightened. "So give me a dose, quick."

His jeans were unbuttoned in a second but the hoped-for swat across the silken underthings did not come as he hoped.

"It's not I worrying about Balthazar, but the reverse," Etienne smiled fondly. "As you know, there was almost no time to prepare me for the big battle, and adrenaline did most of the work in my case. My mate worries that I am not able to take care of myself on either the earthly or angelic planes. And though you might be a mincing kept boy on the inside," there was the sharp thump on the knickers, "in every other way people wouldn't even try to tangle with you."

Dean finally started to laugh. "I think it's a great idea, and I'm your ideal teacher, but you actually think that outfit is going to do anything but make your adversary—human, demon, monster or angel—die laughing?"

He examined the weapons and laughed some more. Etienne was glad of this idea of his lover's. Balthazar was a deep well, so who knew how much he had guessed of Dean's situation and Etienne's involvement in it. But the Spaniard heard two serious notes in the transmission he got from his partner shortly after he left on the expedition. It was difficult to control these mental communications between bonded ones, and Etienne and Balthazar probably had the strongest bond from knowing each other so long. Nevertheless, the man didn't expect any more breaches in the strict confidentiality of the mission, so he had decided to distract Dean with a chance to show off his skills.

"Enough of this pretend shit," Dean said, tossing the foils aside. "Get out of that getup and into something where you can move. My dad didn't let me handle a weapon except on special occasions until I was ten, because he didn't want me dependent on them."

For the next two weeks, Etienne struggled to keep up with his muscled and regimented teacher. He refused to run, so they bought short-term memberships to a gym so he could swim and Dean could use the machines. They found different kinds of supernatural beings in the city, just so Etienne could be familiar with their habits, though they didn't hunt anything upon Dean's refusal to get back in the game.

"Once you kill some nasty here, its cousin is going to be out to get you, next town over," he reasoned.

They were so occupied, in fact, that Etienne thought he might have snapped Dean out of his submission obsession. But it was the older man who said one day in the middle of fighting with blunted knives, "Oh, I wonder how all the Limbo dwellers are doing without our little get-togethers."

Because of the tight security around the apartment, basically no one could get near it without an invitation, and they'd been too busy to send any.

"Let's have them tonight," Dean said with a craven look that contrasted with the sure strokes with which he was blocking his friend's moves.

"Which ones, sweet?" Etienne panted.

"All of them we can fit," Dean said mischievously. "All my favorites. You know what I like." He gave a thrust with his blunted weapon, disarming his adversary.

"Yes, I most certainly do," Etienne said with a bittersweet emphasis, tousling the red hair that had grown rather long to hide the pierced ears Dean wasn't quite comfortable showing off in public yet. "We can have an evening affair for a change!" he said excitedly. "I haven't given a dinner party in a century."

"We don't eat," his companion pointed out, but he was shooed aside with a list of tasks while the other Nephilim contacted their favorites and organized food.

The guests were ferried in separately for maximum discretion, but it was either the unusual number of them—almost twenty—or the imposed fast during the last two weeks, because everyone was simmering with an odd, dark excitement as they politely sampled Etienne's hors d'oeuvres, nodding at his reminiscences about foods eaten years ago.

Probably only the fact that the owner of the apartment was wearing a deliciously tiny and demeaning outfit and acting as servant had anyone eating anything at all.

No one could say, later, which Limbo person moved from the usual pats, slaps and lewd suggestions towards their host, to the turn the evening took.

Dean, too, was excited by so much attention—his kind of attention—and so he didn't say no.

To anything.

The ultimate submission was to be passed from hand to hand, lap to lap, instructed what to do, whipped when he didn't do it just right. Dressed up and undressed with a resounding rip. He couldn't tell anymore what was supposed to be pain and where pleasure ended. All of the weapons in his apartment were put to use on him, often to new use. Occasionally he took breaks to heal his skin back to its perfect, pettable condition, and then the group was on him with a roar that might have been lust, might have been rage that their red handiwork had just been erased.

Time stopped in the apartment. Etienne was all eyes but, as usual, slightly to the side, suggesting, admonishing, encouraging.

Something in the apartment that had been building all night suddenly took an even darker, more precise edge when Etienne stepped up at last.

All the other Limbo dwellers moved back immediately. Everyone knew Etienne felt deeply for Dean, more deeply than the American was aware, and thus, they felt the weightiness of his approach at last.

Dean had happily lost himself in the orders and postures long ago, so he merely looked at Etienne as the last in line, the one he finally conquered with his body.

The slap resounded in the apartment. There were intakes of breath at Dean's glazed eyes reacting to the blow.

Etienne couldn't stop himself once he started. He was so angry at this small space Dean was trying to fit himself into. When there was so much more to him than could ever be held with a knot or a chain. The more he saw the other man's ecstasy at receiving the blows he had just taught his friend how to deliver, the more violent was Etienne's disagreement with Dean's choices.

That it was a whip instead of him, in the end, was not even out of respect for Balthazar, whom he had quite forgotten. Etienne would never waste his true affection on Dean in this state.

Finally, utterly broken, Dean lay there looking at him with adulation.

"Etienne," he said in that tone that was so like the one his friend wished he could hear in other circumstances.

"Sssh," the Spaniard said, holding a finger to the lips with blood in one corner. He fetched the lipstick from one of the tables and carefully reapplied the color, and then kissed Dean for the first time on the lips.

The kiss, he didn't hold back. The kiss was the distillation of everything he had come to see in this man who couldn't see himself.

It was powerful enough that it actually reached Dean. For a moment they looked at each other, and he realized that they would always share a meaningless little island of passion, never to be bridged from the rest of their lives.

Their souls just grazed one another, and in that second, Dean saw himself through the other's eyes, saw the absurdity and the tragedy of spending his days being flayed and then healed again, as if each assault on himself didn't leave an invisible scar, deep down.

In that moment, Dean resolved to change his ways, but most importantly, he saw something that even Etienne didn't see:

The Spaniard, apparently so healthy, was like a string of molecules that could be snapped like a string of pearls.

It was also distracting enough that they didn't feel the denizens of Hell watching them.

"Why Dean, you didn't save yourself for me?" Valac said with a harsh note to his voice. He had chosen a different vessel, this one too, the sort of guy that wore t-shirts with blazers.

"Who is this vulgar man and why has no one told him that grotesque fashion suits no one?" Dean heard clearly from Etienne.

"The new King of Hell," he thought urgently, not sure how long this channel would remain open to them. "The one that—owned me."

Etienne might not be able to pick a demon out of a crowd very well, but he understood very well what that bond between tormentor and subject meant. His eyes transmitted sorrow—he'd just woken Dean up from his thirst for pain, and here was pain incarnate come to collect, with interest.

"Your homegrown suffering is really a touching tribute," Valac said, looking around at all the implements and the Limbo-dwellers, who were paralyzed with fear. "But it pales before the real thing, doesn't it?"

The demon reached out and grasped Argus' arm.

He fell into a pile of ash.

An involuntary quiver went through the room.

"Now, now, it's not as bad as all that," Valac said. "The rest of you may go, after receiving a lesson or two, so that you can tell everyone you meet what you just saw."

Each of the souls that had been torn apart once seemed afraid to move, for fear that they, too, would fall apart. That's what Dean had just glimpsed in Etienne when they kissed, he realized with horror. Heaven might've put all these people back together gain, but they were not quite solid.

He imagined all of Etienne's molecules snapping like pearls and skidding on the floor.

"You are exactly right, Dean, always cleverer than you give yourself credit for," Valac stroked the long hair. "This is lovely on you, by the way," the demon said, distracted for a moment by moving the human's face this way and that, rearranging his hair in different ways. "So many possibilities," he said softly, and then shoved himself back into his leadership role.

"Yes, Winchester has obviously surmised that there will be one more thing for all of you to report." His voice rang out loudly and was swallowed by the soundproofing on all surfaces. "You, dear boy, are a very valuable commodity. Just as much so as your friend, in fact." He touched the Spaniard's arm, who Dean sensed float almost all the way out of his flesh to hover in the angelic body no demon could ever own.

"But they can," Dean thought urgently at his friend. "We're not safe just because we're not totally human." But Etienne let all but his little finger exit this plane that was about to become very unpleasant.

"I won't take much," Valac was saying. "But enough to show your dear Balthazar where your true loyalties lie. How do you think he's going to react to all this?" He gestured with one hand to the undressed Dean, and with the other to the domination equipment. "If I know your fellow, and I think I have some idea of how his mind words, he won't be as hurt by you making out with another man, as with your obvious nostalgia for what was your home for so long, even after all your lover gave you."

The look on Etienne's face caused Dean sympathetic pain. "Don't let them get to you, don't—"

Valac had taken one of the teacups, rented from the caterer for the occasion, and had dissolved Etienne's little finger into dust, which dropped into the porcelain with a tiny sound that Dean would never forget.

He was on his feet and fighting in a second. He got some good blows in, what with their being none of that music to neutralize angelic power.

Valac took his lumps quietly, guarding the teacup with care. "You did this," he said, and Dean froze. "Your tastes, your need for what only I can give you, roped all these fragile souls into your tawdry little roleplay."

All of Dean collapsed into dust, yet he was still quivering there. He stared at his still-solid self in a crazed kind of wonder. "I did this I did this I did this" his brain supplied helpfully.

"So careless of you to hire catering, by the way. One of my minions possessed one of the people who brought up the food, and it was enough to break your security and come back."

The two Nephilim looked at the face belonging to one of the caterers dumbly.

"But the cloud of blackness you've been manufacturing here couldn't help but attract us like bears to honey," Valac continued, taking a small envelope out of his sleazy jacket's inner pocket. "You've been playing with fire, friend, you all have," the demon's gaze encompassed everyone who had been in Limbo.

"I'm no physicist, but it seems to me that once something attains a certain state," he tipped the ash in and sealed the envelope. "It has a tendency to return to that state, given similar conditions." He took out an ostentatious pen and wrote something on the exterior. "Deliver this to Balthazar, please, but not until I have my two new playthings ensconced in their new boudoirs, He's going to move Heaven and Earth to get his true love back." He paused thoughtfully. 'Or will he?"

Etienne was staring at where his finger had been, and Dean would never guess whether he was thinking how glad it was only the finger, or how much he stood to loose for a few S/M sessions: everything.

Persephone was only supposed to spend some time in the underworld, not forever, was the last clear thought Etienne and Dean shared.

"As for you, darling." He fussed with the red hair some more and then touched the earrings with a smile he quickly wiped off his face. Valac stared around the circle. "You tell Castiel what you like, I don't care. He lost this one long ago. There was never any going back."

* * *

Balthazar had been certain for some time that something was wrong, due to the clear channel that existed between him and his beloved, but for Cas' sake, and the sake of the mission, he had kept quiet about it for about a day.

There was indeed something going on with angels who had frequented that unfortunate club. Getting them to admit that they had gone, even in the new, more liberal era, was difficult enough, but there was something…

The envelope was inside his menu when he and the other angels sat down in a café to reconnoiter.

No one in the restaurant heard a thing. It all happened on the angelic plane.

Other than the vessel's finger dipped in ash.

And the vessel's eyes reading the message on the envelope, which Balthazar did not share with anyone.

The three other angels heard the solemn oath in Enochian, but only Cas was shaken to the core.

"For doing this to my beloved, I swear eternal vengeance on you, Dean Winchester."


	28. Chapter 28

At first it worked—all of Etienne was jammed into one thimble of pain.

"You degenerate slime," hissed the demon. "Reunited with your true love and you can't wait to get back to darker pleasures?"

"Dirty gypsy scum—you've mucked about with more than one dark spirit in your day. Your kind always does before ending up here," said another tormentor.

It didn't matter that his Spanish-Gypsy father, who had died when he was 11, was the most tranquil person he had ever known, and not at all the sort to truck with evil spirits. No one ever said that demons had to be particularly well-informed. The barb went in whenever it hit a generally sensitive region.

During those first long hours of tedium in Hell, Etienne thought back to his father, whom he had resembled so little in life. Roberto Vasquez was the sort of man who referred to one of his tomato plants, "una mata de tomates," as if he were talking about a woman, with an emphasis on the feminine gender of the word. To his father, a simple farmer, life was marvelously complex, a seething riot of life and death coming together in ways best summed up by the gendered Spanish language. The world was a romance in the Gypsy fashion—full of bitterness right in the middle of an untamable beauty. He was able to transmit to his son that the universe was a strange mixture of beauty and anguish. And that an intelligent farmer—much like a good poet—knows enough to stand to one side, playing his role quietly while the gods had their way with the fields and the frosts and the heart.

It must have been some strange god who brought his parents together. Even the villagers agreed, when the aristocratic French painter lady showed up, all alone, with her easels and not a word of Spanish, determined to paint the late spring of an obscure village in Andalusia. Marie Valery was able to make her request for the most beautiful scenery understood enough that she was taken before the one man who loved the land more than anyone—his father. Together, the childless widower who was functionally illiterate and the headstrong young woman fleeing from her highbrow family roamed the fields, falling in love with each other only secondarily. What they really loved together was a third thing—the countryside, in all its color and form.

When the brightness of the summer began to fade, Etienne was already blooming in his mother's belly. He was the next third thing that made his parents' always-provisional relationship complete—side by side, they loved this new life they had made. As far as he could remember, his parents had little to say to each other, never having found much to talk about with their disparate lives and languages. But their new triad of love focused on their boy. They each lavished what they had to give on Etienne, making no attempt to blend their different characters in him because they never managed to do so in any other way.

This creature striped with two natures moved fluidly between France and Spain, his mother's world and his father's, spending part of his time in his home village even after his father's death. Etienne's father lived on in his face, the one that would have looked better on top of a donkey cart than in Parisian literary society. Or so the other students at the Sorbonne decided.

As a young man beginning at university, he didn't realize his process of adjustment was any different than the rudimentary teasing between French and Spanish ways that his parents engaged in—the way one country's folk cut bread or made wine. One day, shortly after beginning school, he was invited out dancing. In those days, Etienne hadn't yet worked out that he was excited to be with the other men rather than seeking the well-guarded virtues of the women his fellows were staring at. So he put on his best suit and danced with anyone that would have him.

Dancing was the way he fit in best with the old, proud ways of his home village. What showed Etienne Robert Valery-Vasquez to be one of theirs, though he spoke another language and was lavishly educated for possibilities far beyond those of other villagers. Only when his fellow university students set out a plate to catch the coins—which appeared from all corners, those in on the joke and those who really thought he was putting on a show for money—did he realize it was a setup. To the French students, some of whom were from very humble backgrounds, this particular student was fatally different, would be forever a dark-skinned interloper. They made him understand that even his joy at dancing made him a grifter. That his most intimate self was a scam.

It was a painful evening, but Etienne scooped up the money and stood everyone for drinks, all the while mapping out the contours of this prejudice he had not realized was part of his lot in Paris.

When he needed money, and he often did once his mother died and he resolved to continue his schooling, Etienne would later do exactly what he did that night: dance and collect tips. But at the right sort of establishment, one thick with intellectuals longing for the authentic and not knowing enough to see him as a darker version of themselves. On those occasions, he would be what they thought he was, and laugh at their underestimation of him. Etienne knew there was far more to him than something to gawp at, though he soon noticed that both sexes found him nice to look at.

A few times times his delicate attractiveness made them mistake him for a whore at the salons he soon got invited to, not for entertainment, but because an outsider's wit is always sharper than any part-time wag who worked at the embassy during the week. Etienne discovered that some people really liked him letting loose how little he thought of them. The bejeweled gentlewomen with their atrocious poetry, they couldn't believe he was serious when he called their verses the product of an anesthetized soul.

"So very Spanish!" "Look at those dark eyes flash!"

And if they were still laughing at him, he was also laughing at these people, women and men, who offered him money to continue his decimating of them, in private sessions where what they wanted, more than his touch, was the lash of his tongue.

Etienne's mind filled the empty hours between torture sessions. Those verbal evisceration sessions in cushioned Parisian parlors, were they the beginning of the dark relationship he had had with Dean much later? No, he decided, Dean was a tormented soul but there wasn't a bit of pretense in him. The others in long-vanished Paris wanted him to strip away all that was false. Dean wanted something much more delicate from his Tiny: to delicately fillet dark from light.

Etienne's thoughts floated back to his earlier memories of being the paid "gitano" in France. His strategy in the face of prejudice was to be what they thought he was. Perhaps that worked all right with humans, but that tactic was the key of what got him disintegrated the first time in Hell. Sure, look what you're doing to me, cabrón, look at what you have made yourself into by sticking me with spikes. See, look at me writhe and grovel, you toad. I won't lift a finger to resist, pig.

Fighting back in Hell hurts more, but it at least keeps you in one painful piece.

He should have learned with that bitch of a medium while he was still alive—with some dark creatures, they couldn't care less. They would never see their reflection, so trying to deflect their debasement back to them wouldn't work.

Ah, that cunt of a clairvoyant who strung him along in his pain. Hating her did keep him together for a time. He was so vulnerable and she sniffed him out during the painful days and months after Balthazar left.

Etienne had been robbed of even the memory of his dear Balthazar—the presence once closer than his very flesh-and had tried all manner of things to fill that space. He let it flow now, the awful memories of that nagging certainty. Something was here, inside him. Someone was here. He remembered stopping people on the street to tell them about the angels he was sure were flitting through our hearts—like fishes, he remembered babbling to someone. Like bright canaries. The short stay at the asylum, and when he was released, his death. Etienne was sure that no one tied their noose so ecstatically as he did. So hopeful was he in the midst of his madness that he would see this face he couldn't quite assemble, that love that was somewhere waiting for him…. Just on the other side…

This was the other key to his downfall in Hell. Balthazar never came. Oh, the demons reassured him that this longed-for love existed. They regaled him with stories about the likable angel's exploits that had reached Hell. They were well-informed. There was no mistaking that they were talking about the angel with the sardonic sense of humor that Etienne remembered with exquisite clarity in Hell. And though the demons assured him that administrative mistakes did happen and angels did come to correct them, his angel, his Balthazar never came to rescue him.

Etienne rearranged his angelic body slightly so mitigate the pain from the lash and thus keep his would-be tormentor in a galling state of boredom.

He smiled.

This time he was quite comfortable down below. It was amusing, in fact. The day he'd figured out how to regrow his lost finger especially so, given that he'd actually grown many extra fingers in his efforts and the demon in charge of his torments that day had fled at the sight of all those new digits. Too bad old Crowley wasn't there to appreciate how the tables had turned.

It very nearly could be otherwise. One of the best laughs Etienne had had so far was watching the devils scratching their heads over his immunity to that racket they had piped in to his cell as a sure-fire way to undo him. Etienne thought back to the moment when Dean's old lover, Adonis, intoned his psalm in the middle of battle. Everyone knew about this relationship, a doomed love-match, and so Adonis' psalm had seemed to be a well-intentioned effort to soothe the angelic virtues by invoking love, rather than war. To the three individuals in that love trio—Dean, Adonis, and Castiel—that moment was unfortunately very painful for each of them in their own way.

To a close observer from Hell, however, that instant was significant in another manner entirely. The humans under Cas' command had turned on Adonis with a frenzy, it was true, but the angels had been reached by the heartfelt psalm of love.

They had been paralyzed in the middle of the fray. Unable to raise a sword.

Valac was, at that time, not even a pretender to the throne of Hell. But he had noticed the effect of a few words upon the Heavenly Host, and had left the battlefield that day sure that he personally, and his realm, were actually the winners in that clumsy skirmish.

By possessing some of the best minds in the field of audio science, the demons had learned to change the tuning of angelic virtues, without ever understanding how an angel really works.

"There is nothing else. You are far from your God."

This is the sort of thing angels had been arguing about incessantly for centuries, apparently, but somehow the devils managed to stick the angels' revolving virtues like a phonograph record. Where celestial beings could have easily brushed away their tricks before, the demons created a real absence, a real craving. The way all addictions start—by saying there is something better somewhere, somewhere other than here.

Better than psalms talking of a vanished god. Better than brethren who might be interested in humans or impressing an invisible hierarchy but still had little love for each other.

Hell was there for you, was the marketing angle. They knew what you wanted, they _taught_ you what you wanted. And you could come back for more any time you liked.

Etienne worked all this out in the few minutes it took to right himself from the moment of vertigo caused by the noise.

No one could jam his angelic workings, or his human ones, for that matter. Etienne could feel his lover through their bond, and nothing was stronger than that truth. He could feel their link vibrating through him like a tuning fork, righting any demon-sponsored confusion.

His mate was very far away, but still so close. Etienne talked to him constantly through the bond, hoping that at the very least to transmit the fact that he was still alive, and quite well, in fact.

Etienne kept thinking at some of the schooling he had received in France, but mostly, what his father would say about his current situation. "You can't keep a sliver of light in pure darkness," his father would have reasoned. "One would have to change its nature."

It was true. This was the conclusion he'd come to during this long time in the Inferno, which really seemed more like a cheesy bordello this time around. Etienne was sure that because he belonged somewhere else, that part of himself was with Balthazar right now, that all he had to do was skip over to that reality, which would be a far more comfortable fit than his current captivity.

Etienne had to fully inhabit his body occasionally, because otherwise he felt his molecules start to thin and he began looking a bit insubstantial. But most of the time he hovered in his angelic form and thought, searching for the door home to his love, whose anger and frustration came to him more clearly every day through the bond.

"Don't worry about me my love. I'll be back before you know it. But help Dean. He's in desperate straits—we have a sort of bond, you see? Don't be angry my love, I know you have a great deal of affection for him, so if his mate is feeling angry at this most recent betrayal, please do what you can to help him."

* * *

In the department for Arcane Matters, Balthazar raged once more, "You knew he would be put together in some fragile version of himself and you didn't tell us what precautions to take, Tink?"

Grace put its hand on its diminutive hips. "I really don't have more to say about the matter. It's above my pay grade."

"Are you allowed to say whether bargaining with Hell for his safety _could_ get some part of him back to me in solid form? Though I understand no one is going to let me try." Every time Balthazar tried to go to Hell on his own power, he found himself somewhere extraneous, like Cleveland.

"You are needed on Earth, Balthazar," Grace said patiently. "You and your twin are the only ones who will be able to complete this mission. So play nice and stop being upset that your beloved had certain exclusive tastes."

She disappeared.

Lucky for her, the angel fumed. The idea that his beloved would seek comfort elsewhere was supremely painful. All those arguments they'd had since their reunion, with Balthazar shouting again and again, "I don't care how dark it is, dammit, let me go there with you—just don't shut me out!"

Effectively shut out of the Arcane Matters section, Balthazar stalked down the corridor to the administrative offices where he seemed condemned to spend his time.

"Brother, brother," Castiel called until he had to stop.

"No," Balthazar said simply.

"You have communications with your partner. I know you do. Have mercy on me, who can hear nothing. Tell me how things are for them."

"I can feel him pleading for my assistance," Balthazar said tiredly. "So I try to cheer myself with the thought that there is still part of him that hasn't been pulverized by the denizens of Hell. Other than that presence, I know nothing."

"But you spent more time down there than I have," Castiel wheedled. "If you could only describe the topography to me, or perhaps give me some insight into demon psychology, I might be able to help my mate."

"Castiel." Balthazar launched his truth virtue at his brother until he was practically throttled with it. "I will not do anything in aid of the man who had part of my lover delivered to me in an envelope."

"But we don't know that, brother, you know how demons lie."

Balthazar sighed. He hated hurting his brother's feelings. "They needed something from each other Castiel. I hoped very much to outlast this fling with my steady affections, but Etienne's attraction for Dean was much more serious than I let on."

The revelation hit Cas hard, and then he lashed back, "If you would only let me see what the envelope said, perhaps I could judge for myself."

The bit of Etienne housed in the envelope was ensconced in a secret place in Heaven, waiting to be fused back into his lover when he eventually found him.

If he found him in time.

"It said, and I quote, 'Dean Winchester took something held together by Scotch tape—your beloved—and exposed him to Hellfire. You see what it did to his little finger. Since they both obviously would rather be here, we'll see how long it takes to undo the rest."

"Dean doesn't want to be there, Balthazar, how can you think any part of that message is true?" Castiel said desperately. "If we pool our resources, perhaps—"

"We are forbidden from doing anything except move against this tawdry little club in Hell's Kitchen! Now if you don't mind, I'm going to receive more orders from the administration I feel quite justified for having mistrusted."

He hurried off. Castiel felt as though he was going to come apart himself, from worrying about his mate. Dean was troubled, he knew this, but the last time he entered Hell, it was out of despair that Cas had shut him out. They were working on things now. Dean had forgiven him.

Dean had been changed enough by his—time—with that man that their bond had not yet reestablished itself with the old clarity. But every day Castiel felt he could feel and hear his lover a little better. Now that he was in another realm, however, Cas had only his faith:

Dean would not want to be left to rot in Hell.

* * *

Valac halted the regular motions of the hairbrush for a moment. "Do you want your hair in a pretty ribbon, or do you want it loose?"

The blue eyes were on him, searching for the right answer. "Let's use the ribbon," Valac supplied so that the painful emptiness in front of him didn't stretch on too long. He could hardly believe his good fortune: an angelic beauty right here in Hell, and he was all Valac's.

Except Dean was slipping from his talons, bit by bit each day.

Valac was Hell-born, unlike Crowley and most other demons in leadership positions. He had never had a chance at redemption and then messed it up, so he had less of a reason to take out his frustrations on his fellow man. Hell-spawn like himself were thus thought to be less vicious, less nuanced in their ability to turn human psychology against itself. One of the few native Hellions to reach his current rank, he always felt the rest watching, waiting for him to screw up.

But he had quieted any upstarts with the incredible coups—first, the sound technology to paralyze the angels, and second, getting a half-angel—a Winchester!—to say yes.

But it wasn't like before, like the first time Valac had Dean down below. Last time the Winchester man was there, it was like he had promised in his sales pitch—after a long day of flogging and taunting, he could come home and someone was waiting in his nest, waiting for HIS torture and no one else's. It was a personal bond, and Valac had never had anything personal. They played dark games, had rituals. Dean cried out his name when the lash bit in too deep—not for mercy but because he wanted to make sure that specifically Valac was on the other side of the river of blood.

Like most other hell-spawn, Valac had lived with the knowledge of angels for a long time without ever seeing one. Not until the End Times began and they returned to earth in legion. But on one of his few excursions topside, a century or so ago, Valac had stolen some Victorian portraits claiming to depict angels. He was curious. They all were. And now here was a half-angel right in his clutches, Dean looking more and more like the portrait every day: an ethereal young man, his long hair with a bit of a curl to it, brushing his bare shoulders. Draped in a filmy tunic. Lying there languid and perfect. Eyes that seemed to go on for miles, eyes you could lose yourself in and maybe float your way to Heaven.

Valac had seen at once that he could make this delectable specimen into just the sort of specimen he wanted, and he did.

How Valac had enjoyed showing off his prize around Hell! This was exactly the sort of angel they had all envisioned, not the stone-faced soldiers angels turned out to be. It fulfilled some sort of need in the demons, seeing an angel up-close, pliant and beautiful, and when Valac gave the occasional smack or lash to the always newly-healed skin, a sigh of longing would go through the denizens of the lower realm. Their very own angel. Yes, now they had everything. An unusual contentment spread through the ranks, and Valac realized it was good business, if nothing else, having an angel to torment and desire as they pleased.

If only the king of Hell could keep it strictly business.

It caused him an agony he had no words for, to see Dean fading away. No longer fighting back against either the whip or its absence. Just giving up. Valac had long since given up needling the man about turning his friends to dust and disappointing his lover. Because Dean seemed about to crumble entirely. All the signs were there. Everyone told him so. "Congratulations on sending your first soul to pieces so quickly," the sycophants crowed. Who to ask about how to keep him in one delightful, whimpering piece? That bled, even. Real blood. Oh, there was no more perfect creature than this half-angel, half-man. Real flesh with all its red fervor was the Holy Grail for demons, used to contenting themselves with flaying people's memories of flesh.

But now, Valac's dolly wouldn't even heal himself anymore. Was it that he couldn't remember how? That he didn't care? That's when Valac began binding his toy's wounds so he would stay alive for another flaying. And in so doing, began to take pleasure in it. In the healing touch. Even as the demon felt a bitter powerlessness at this process he began and now seemed unable to halt. He was occasionally rewarded by a "thank you" whispered by the lips that were a smudge of red lost in the pale face. No one had ever said that to Valac. Then beatings became an excuse to bind him, pet him, elicit that wan smile.

These days Valac went to every length to disguise his attempts to keep his personal angel in one piece. He painted on bruises so others would think he was still following his assigned role. But Dean looked so terrible no one doubted he was giving out tortures galore.

He led his plaything around on a leash now, not in a show of dominance, as before, but because Dean wandered off and got lost. He was a vague slip of a presence, and Valac was terrified that he'd simply disappear on him.

The head demon had even stopped using the music to paralyze the angel, thinking it would help him heal, but his angel withered by the day like a kept bird, and the worst thing about hell was that you never had anyone you could talk to. not really. He had sent people searching through the archives looking for more information about what would reduce a soul to dust, but he had no one with whom to share his anguish at the idea of losing his pet.

* * *

Balthazar and Castiel were locked in silent surveillance near the Hell's Kitchen club. Heaven had granted them especially effective cloaking sigils for the task neither of them wanted, so they were doing all that they could think to do—watch.

They had cautiously worked up to actually going inside to establishment, and both angels had watched their fellows engaged in regrettable acts.

"Surely this must be no surprise to you," Cas needled his more experienced brother. "You've done it all."

"And I was in Hell while doing it," Balthazar said in a hollow voice, watching the methodical movements of his comrades whose virtues were paralyzed by the music.

"They don't look very happy, but they come back." Cas said. "I don't understand why we were assured we would be immune."

The two angels went in and out freely, but there was little to see once they'd invisibly watched their brothers relieve themselves of their celestial natures. Their mission was good for one thing—distracting them from their ongoing argument about what to do for their lost mates. It was certainly an important assignment—Grace was unusually communicative, apparently receiving pressure to resolve the matter from her superiors, whom the angels had scarcely ever heard from.

Who had ever thought angels found it such a burden to be angels?

"You're hardly cheerful yourself, brother," Balthazar was saying in response to Castiel's complaints about his terse manner. "I'm merely being professional when I refuse to entertain your doomsday imaginings."

"Don't listen to him, Cas, he's dying inside," Etienne said, suddenly appearing by their side.

"Thank you for having the presence of mind to shield Etienne with the cloaking sigil," a notably more relaxed Balthazar said some moments later. "My mate's new trick of growing extra fingers was quite distracting."

As Balthazar had given him a very thorough going-over before he agreed that Etienne was indeed all right, if very thin, the Nephilim in question was a bit flustered. It took him a moment before he said, "So, I take it you've gotten my messages and are trying to find a way to fight against this Hell-weapon that has done such terrible things to Dean."

The angels' argument in the Enochian Etienne still didn't know very well yet had him totally perplexed.

"We're on an official assignment," Balthazar finally said tersely. "We were not allowed to focus on either you or—him."

"How is he? Why didn't you bring him with you?" Castiel interrupted.

"Their music had no effect on me," Etienne said, biting back the observation that he'd gotten out by the grace of the strong bond with his mate. Castiel would be shattered to find out that Dean couldn't do the same. "They made you think that I was the weak one, I'm sure, but really I've never been stronger. It's Dean who is injured. You know how they exploit anything they can to get in. It's very urgent that we free him right away. I was able to hear him sometimes," he met Balthazar's gaze, which registered the intimacy between the two men implied by the telepathy.

After Etienne had only begun to describe Dean's weakened and battered state, Castiel was a knot of rage and even Balthazar couldn't wish another soul to be turned to dust.

The three flew to Castiel's interdimensional room to plot, their assignment forgotten.

"I think Cas' plan is the best," Etienne said after drinking another protein shake. They had barely kept his flesh alive while the demons considered what to do with him as a bargaining piece, and his narrow frame was terribly thin from a poor diet.

"It's audacious, I'll give him that," Balthazar said, still putting on a show of being unhelpful.

"It will work best if he has a second," Etienne said. "And while I would love to help, I've had my fill of Hell for the next little while." He gave a special look to his mate and Balthazar melted.

"I was the diplomatic relation for both Hell and Heaven for a time," he admitted.

"Because you asked me to," he said silently to Etienne through their bond.

"It is not what you think, nothing at all for you to fear," Etienne thought back, reassuring the angel of who still held the primary place in his affections.

Castiel appeared at the gates of Hell, with his brother by his side, each carrying a briefcase.

"Have you come to negotiate at last?" asked the bored demon. "I'm afraid you might be too late."

The vessel Castiel had been using, a sturdy-looking Slavic fellow, showed nothing on his face to betray the angel's anguish. "That's precisely why I'm here," he said coolly. "I think I can help."

Valac took them into his chambers immediately, and said with a show of disinterest, "So, you've decided losing one of your own to our side is a big black eye for Heaven."

"As losing one of my own was for Hell," Balthazar said with a smile. "Things really have gone downhill with this administration, for you to simply misplace a prisoner like that. Etienne is doing quite well, though he's very hungry."

"I've given Winchester the very best treatment since he's been here," the demon said with a note of sincerity that did not go unnoticed. "So what are you offering for his safe return?"

"Nothing," Castiel said with his best blank stare.

"Nothing?" repeated Valac, intrigued. "You mean, you want a soul, and not just any soul, for free? Surely you don't mistake me for the head of a charitable institution?"

"I know exactly what you are, and what you feel," Castiel said, his voice firm with what he could see in the demon, confirming what Etienne had described. "I have loved Dean Winchester for years, so it's impossible for you to hide your affection for him from me."

The demon gave a quick look around to see that no one was listening, and then he almost launched himself at the angel. "What am I doing wrong? He's fading away! I've even bought books on the subject," Valac gave a craven look of supplication, "but I can't seem to keep him from running through my fingers. Every day I look at him and I think he might—"

"This is precisely the situation we are offering to take off your hands," Balthazar cut in. "It would look terrible, don't you think, for such an illustrious prisoner to escape, and none of us wishes Dean to be reduced to dust."

His brother sent him a grateful vibration. "But if you release him to me I promise to take excellent care of him," Cas said. "I know just what he needs to be well."

"But what will I tell everyone?" the demon moaned with his head in his hands. "This whole thing has become a mess! I was so content to become the new sovereign, and then this—this—thing happened to me, and now I hang on this one man's every move. I worry about him!" An odd kind of sob came out of his mouth and he clutched at his throat, surprised. "I just want an end to this torment. It's a torture unlike anything I could have ever imagined. If only I could mass-produce it! This, caring thing. I can't bear the thought of my Dean breaking apart-"

Balthazar had to shoot a very pointed order at his brother not to react to the demon's possessiveness about Dean.

"I can guarantee you that he will be whole again with me," Castiel said.

"Could I, visit him sometimes?" Valac ventured.

"You can see he's got the same problem as my Etienne," Balthazar cut in. "Dean has been weakened by whatever you infernal creatures have done to him. One wrong move and Etienne is dust-as you so vividly proved."

Castiel had to utter several oaths in Enochian to get his twin back on track.

"The same is true of Dean, I'm afraid," Cas said. "I can feel him where you have him. He's very weak. Any further exposure to the demonic side of things could be fatal." The angel could feel a very faint trace of Dean's presence. His soul resounded with relief.

"There's nothing to stop your side from following the latest Winchester scuttlebutt," Balthazar said reassuringly. "Everything he does will always be in the public eye, in any realm."

The demon nodded, resigned. "No one ever checks anything in a pseudo-monarchy, you understand, so I'll make out like you gave me a princely sum, and then when the amount of souls doesn't wash in the books, I'll squash my accountant or something."

"Good thinking," Balthazar said, sensing his brother's impatience. "Would you mind if we transported him?"

"Of course," Valac said, leading the two visitors through the corridors and into his private chamber.

Dean gave some sort of wordless whisper from where he lay, draped in a tunic.

"Yes, it's really me," Castiel said, inching forward for fear that the slightest shift in the environment would pulverize his love. Dean looked one wrong move away from turning into dust, but still he moved his hand slightly to Cas, a weak light coming into his face.

As Cas warred between the urge to pick up his partner and the terror of harming him, Valac stared at the bond between the two. "How do you do that?" he asked in a wretched voice. "How do you make him better just by coming in the room?"

"Consider it a state secret, one that we may be back to negotiate on in the future," Balthazar improvised, suddenly beginning to put together this personal mission with their official business.

"I don't want to harm you," Castiel was saying through their bond. He was horrified to see that Dean was transparent in some places.

"Even after I've messed everything up?" Dean asked. "I thought I heard Etienne sometimes, but you think you hear a lot of things in this place. Is he-?"

"He is fine. Very well, in fact," and suddenly Cas wasn't afraid of Dean's relationship with the other man. He knew very well what he began to know when he began reassuring the demon that he knew what Dean needed.

Castiel did know what Dean needed.

Everything fit together like a puzzle as he took his lover into his arms and then held him close, closer still, until they were both contained in the one vessel.

"This is the safest way to carry him," Cas said before the wide eyes of the demon. "A soul is a very powerful thing, as you know, and I happen to have one. He's warming to it already."

"We'll be in touch," Balthazar said as they left the empty briefcases with the king of hell for show.

The souls unfortunate enough to fall in Valac's path that evening felt all his rage and confusion at loving and losing an angel in each lash that fell across their backs.


	29. Chapter 29

"Ya'll want that drink topped up?" Bobby asked.

"Give 'er a splash, Bobby, thanks," Dean said.

"I'm glad one of you boys was finally able to bring somebody home for Thanksgiving, even if you're missing out on my famous beer-marinated turkey," his uncle said, giving himself a second helping.

"Gina has a really good reason not to celebrate the colonization of her land," Sam said. "I think your turkey tastes even better the next day, so it's perfect that we're going to do it all over again tomorrow."

Sam's Navajo girlfriend's got him all political, was the look their uncle shot in Dean's direction.

Which was also Cas' direction.

"I don't see the sheriff here, either, but she's coming on the same Angel Train as Gina," Dean said through Castiel's control of his mouth. "You got the final list of who else you want us to piggyback on over here from the res?"

"Now that you have twice the juice, I guess you could bring a whole bunch of people pretty quick," Bobby mused, considering revising the guest list for the big day-after-Thanksgiving dinner they had planned.

"I can't believe he was really serious about having us over for Thanksgiving in one body," Dean thought to Cas from within the privacy of their one body. "That day when we went public with everything, back at that motel, I didn't think we'd make it."

"I'm very glad we did," Castiel said to him, lifting more whiskey and orange juice to their lips.

"This is my first Thanksgiving," the angel said aloud. "Though I did once attend a harvest celebration in Rome that was similar."

"Hey, I can't wait for you to compare notes with Gina tomorrow," Sam said excitedly. "You'll know stuff she's never even heard of about her culture. Our culture," he amended, proudly. He still couldn't believe it when he sat with some of the leaders at the tribal gatherings, but Sam had played a key role invoking and negotiating with some of the oldest gods during the apocalypse, and that apparently meant a lot.

"Don't let Darla hear you say that," Dean said. "Besides, I'm still her favorite Winchester."

"'Cause the two of you are such bitches when you get together," Sam retorted. He'd been burned several times over the last time he'd been with the two of them, a few weeks ago.

"Don't knock it till you try it," Dean forced through Cas' control of his mouth before the angel was able to decode the double entendre. He was loving every second of having his mate inside of him, Cas' will owning every one of his muscles.

"Please pass the potatoes," choked out their uncle.

The two Winchesters enjoyed a big belly laugh at Bobby's evident discomfort at certain particulars, which paled in comparison to Castiel's embarrassment at any discussion of their relationship's details. The angel's embarrassment was fighting with Dean's laughter on their face.

"Damn, Dean, I bet making Cas say freaky shit never gets old," his brother said.

"He has veto power when he really wants it. The other day we went to the beach in Brazil and I tried to make him say—"

"Yes, the weather in Brazil was very nice," Castiel broke in to avoid the catcall Dean had tried to make him utter. Now that Dean was back to his usual cocky self, the fact that he had a much larger romantic field to play had the angel policing certain appreciative responses he felt welling up in the best vessel he'd ever worn.

More than once after things became complicated with Dean, Castiel had worried that it was all downhill after those two days during which they had become a couple, and then, briefly, a singular being in some crucial way. Perhaps their getting together was merely Heaven's way of righting things after the official scripts had been changed with Dean's refusal of the Archangel Michael.

After Las Vegas, something had always been wrong between him and Dean. Cas' soul painfully registered this feeling, which made his soul reach out more desperately to Dean's. Now that he had a soul, and were more alike than ever, shouldn't they be moving closer rather than farther away?

"Remember when I was so freaked out about those soul-sandwiches made by the Jimi-god?" Dean's thoughts flowed smoothly into Cas'. "I didn't want anyone in here with us, but I don't think it works exactly like that."

Cas sensed the new note that was Etienne's influence trill through Dean's molecular activity.

It didn't bother him anymore.

Because that was Dean, too.

"Oh, so you mean it's like the wave-particle duality theory," was the metaphor the angel had used when Dean was finally able to explain where Cas kept getting tripped up in their relationship.

It was not the first time that Cas had made a reference that Dean hadn't understood. When the angel first resurrected him, he'd dropped many Shakespeare quotations before realizing that the narrow set of refresher books on human culture that Heaven sent field officers every so often were woefully out of date.

"Nah, Sam got 'em sometimes. I was always thinking about getting some supernatural action for myself instead of paying attention in English class."

"What you understood and I did not, it's a concept Einstein dealt with, Dean. He, too, did not do well in school. It makes me frustrated when you refuse to accept you might be somewhat intelligent," Cas thought in one of their lightning-fast exchanges over the same neural network. Then he said aloud. "Sometimes Dean can be rather irritating. Might I try some of that cranberry sauce?"

The rule was, everything at Bobby's Thanksgiving dinner had some form of alcohol in it. Sam and Dean had caught Bobby doctoring every single one of his dishes with a little extra kick. The only thing they couldn't figure out was the mashed potatoes, but both of them had experienced eating leftover potatoes and getting a buzz off them. The cranberry sauce slid down easy—a requirement when the two were sharing one vessel—and delivered a nice soothing shot of vodka and triple sec all the way down.

"You're becoming a lush," Dean thought at him.

"No way I'd share a noggin with him for five minutes, and he's family," Bobby snorted. "How you two don't spontaneously combust from sheer obstinacy I'll never understand."

"Any one of my brother's faults you can name, I can tell you a way to deal with it," Sam leaned forward eagerly, glad to share his painfully acquired brotherly coping skills. "When he gets wound up—"

Dean retreated to a part of his brain while Cas assumed his earnest note-taking posture before Sam and Bobby's stories of Dean-wrangling. It was weird how easy it was for them to flow in and out of each other's thoughts, but it was so right. When he first was fused into Cas' vessel back in Hell, he was so far gone he felt more like a rapidly scattering mist than a person.

The closest he could pinpoint it was that he'd been in Hell and found a door. It was a beckoning light that he gravitated towards. The nausea he felt for what he'd let himself become, what he glimpsed through Etienne's eyes with their kiss, was so intense he would do anything to get away from it. All the torture felt good at first because it was justice. If he screamed and struggled against his bonds it wasn't to avoid the whip, but because he wanted to take it up himself, wanted worse.

But what was going on his mind was more painful still.

"What kind of a bastard turns his friends into disposable sex toys?" was one thought that beat his brain bloody, but it still kept replaying the disintegration of Argus, his favorite S/M buddy, in slow motion. "Cas took me back after I cheated on him big time with Adonis, and then I can't be content with him?" was another.

The promise was of stillness. Sometimes in the worst of the torments, he attained a moment when all of him stilled. There was the music that they used kept his virtues more or less quiet, which was a blessing because truth, beauty, temperance-these things had nothing to do with Hell and the contrast was jarring. But the torture sometimes made his mind and his body and everything else disappear for a moment. These blips were so wonderful he would have called them like Heaven, but he knew too much now to think of the place that should have been his home as a paradise.

He started courting these moments of release, and while that was happening, he stopped caring what was going on with his body that he couldn't be at peace in anymore for some reason. At first he had some awareness that Valac was really into being with him, in a less businesslike way than last time.

But that didn't matter, because this time Dean was as focused on his torture sessions as your average smack addict was serious about his fix.

It didn't take long for him to get really excited about the visits of the head demon. No one else was allowed near him this time, and so he could sense the whiff of Valac's particular sulfuric bouquet all the way down his private corridor. It caused his heart to quicken, this harbinger of stillness approaching. His first time in Hell he'd had Betty his imaginary bottle to evoke boozy good times, but Valac was a fix on two cloven hooves and man, oh, man what addictive personality doesn't want their frosty beer to come up to them and pour itself down their throat?

"Come here little bitch, and take what you really like," his top-shelf-whiskey forgetfulness would say to him, and Dean took it any way he could. By the time he was searching out for any part of himself that wasn't a collapsed vein, he was doing the equivalent of taking in the pain by shooting it between his toes.

Then came the solitary times when he was forced to dry out so he could soak up more smacks again. Hell had this sort of thing figured out down to the exact science so as to make best use of their torturers' time.

Despite himself, his beaten mind would inevitably pick itself up and begin to wander at the pace of a crawl.

He watched the process enough times to really understand how an addict works. The demon razed his mind to a smooth surface, but it didn't last. Everything he was hiding from, which was basically everything he'd done to Cas, gradually grew back until it scraped him raw.

"Dean Winchester, you emotionally stunted bastard. You thought it was the job that kept you from getting close to somebody, but you're a toxic mess that destroys everyone he gets close to. Cas knew who he was before he met you, and now you gave him the ability to feel all the shit in the universe, plus all the crap you unloaded on him. Good thing you got yourself quarantined downstairs and can't hurt him anymore."

Valac made it all stop for a little while. Gradually, his mind stopped speaking to himself so pointedly, the thoughts coming from all over as if from outside his brain like the times he'd smoked pot. He found out later he was actually tuning in to Etienne's mental wanderings, but at the time it was like getting snatches of an audio book or something. He heard the Nephilim's memories of searching for Balthazar after his memory had been wiped away, and on some level he started to understand.

Etienne fell apart, he got possessed by any evil spirit he could dredge up, was thrown into an asylum for attacking people on the streets because they didn't understand. All because he had an angel-shaped hole inside of him, left by this intimate coexistence with an alien life form. He wasn't sure what it was like for the average vessel, who he'd heard existed in a kind of suspended animation while the angel was using them. But between his Spanish friend and Balthazar some essential veil had dropped and it was not the clean transaction it was meant to be. It destroyed Etienne.

Dean had been trying to fill his own angel-shaped hole left after Cas was taken away so abruptly. What would it have been like for them if they could have felt their bond develop gradually, with no separations or spells or outside pressures? They might be like the Ten: two fully realized beings working in concert for the greater good. But nothing had ever been a straight path for Dean, not even when he was exclusively straight.

His early life had him buffeted on both sides by his father's and brother's fates, and the only thing he had ever recognized as "self' was something lopsided and thirsty inside him that steered him towards fistfights and demon-ganking. Even all those girls were never a destination in themselves, but symptoms of a wanderlust more than a lust. Dean always wanted to get lost in someone, something bigger than himself, and his family's huge vendetta had done nicely for a long time. He never really had to live for himself until his first time in Hell.

Now on his third time, Dean was able to put together some patterns. Cas thought of it as something that Crowley did to him, but being a bottom here in this rock-bottom had been as natural as falling off a bar stool, something he'd done so many times when he'd slowly turned to whiskey-flavored jelly in some roadhouse somewhere in America. By the time your muscles start splaying of their own accord, you're no longer in control of your own show, and damn if that didn't hit the spot sometimes. After that point of being shitfaced, it didn't matter whether you fucked or fought, because anything scratched that itch for contact.

He remembered comparing fucking to ganking and how weird Sam thought that was, but there was something to it. Dean was great at hunting, he was made for it and not much else, and it must have to do with courting your quarry and dancing with it until the death, poltergeist goo optional. "You just have a hands-on intelligence," his father had said to him when yet one more school tried to do something about how many grade levels he'd fallen behind.

Oh yeah, Dean loved the hands-on approach.

"Valac! Valac!" he was vaguely aware of himself screaming. He kept losing parts of himself and then seeing them all milling around like an army without a general: organs, bones, nerves, memories, angelic body, feelings. What he was really trying to say was, keep it comin', fuck yeah, I can drink anyone under the table. When he was literally on the floor soused in Montana or Maine, when the room was spinning was he only looking up the skirts of the barmaids or were his eyes wandering even then?

It was hard to put together the two halves of his life, pre- and post-Cas, these two Deans with such different tastes. Maybe that was what he had been trying to do with the Limbo women who pierced his ears and brushed his hair and taught him how to cross his legs. Now that he had enjoyed quite a few men's bodies wielded by Cas, it made him want to understand what women had felt with him, to try to bridge the gap between giving and receiving. Come to think of it, his first time in Hell being the first time he'd had to be a passive recipient-of pain, in that case.

Damn if all this could have been prevented by kissing Davin Windham back! He could have been like that Other Dean who, if he fucked up his own apocalypse, got it back on track without the entire universe thinking he was a putz.

"Totally not professional," he'd heard his father's voice saying to him every day since the big fight. "Lost your focus like no son of mine would. Should've stuck to women instead of becoming a whiny bitch in the middle of battle. Lucky your brother was pulling both your weights this time." That shit hurt, worse than the real looks of disappointment Dean saw from everyone in the Cause, worse even than the Khan's muttered goodbye when his final destiny had been discharged.

He thought back to his first sneaking sips of his father's liquor. Raised in a teetotaling family, his dad had acquired regular drinking habits only some years after his vendetta against the Yellow-Eyed Demon had cooled into a sticky nostalgia for his original clear anger. Not having his own teen drinking memories to fall back on, his dad didn't see any reason to trace a ten-year-old experimenting with whiskey to later problems.

The occasional drink his father turned a blind eye to, if he noticed at all, so Dean snuck a little here and there, and it helped him go back and focus on his responsibilities as the family anchor. Davin had been the first sign that there was something powerful in him that was being ignored, but that incident soon was coated over by all the other places and faces. All those girls…

They hadn't been exactly suffering in bed, he was gratified to realize at some point. He'd talked with a couple of the angels he'd seen at the Hell's Kitchen club, the ones he could blackmail if he wanted to so he could be sure his questions would go no further. He asked whether they had had sex both in a male vessel and a female one, and if so, how the two experiences compared.

"As you know, there is no gender among angels" one had said. "Your culture could just as easily call us all 'she' by default. So we think less in those terms than in the vessel-marking and other angelic measures of proximity."

"When it comes down to it, we think more in terms of giver and receiver," another had said, fresh from a torture session that left all his virtues limp. "With so little communication forthcoming from above, angels have forgotten what it is like to be—inspired-from without."

Inspiration. That must be what Dean felt when he and Cas were messing around, and it's not like he'd ever been a slouch between the sheets. Damn, it was good, but why wasn't damn good, enough?

The times when he happened upon a girl in a bar and went back to her place to find her really kinky in the bedroom, he'd been all for it. It was a game, some new edge to push. But what he'd been doing with Etienne and the other Limbo-dwellers, that had been seeking an edge and deliberately cutting himself on it. They had centuries of combined experience with Hell's best techniques for distraction. To forget, to forget—what? The public failure of his first real love affair? Committing the ultimate hunter's sin, which was to go into a fight on auto pilot? Seeing Adonis nearly get torn apart?

Adonis. He tried not to think of this person he should have been smarter than to fall in love with, but the smart, strong Greek man had hit the spot when he needed it. His double's boyfriend had filled that angel-shaped space in him, which probably was just a space that always existed and Cas flooded with a sun's worth of presence. But Adonis completed him too.

And how.

He was a perfect fit for some other need, as the destined lover for another Dean in another world not too dissimilar from his.

I want. I want. I want. Something in him had said no matter how many times Cas had tried to please him in a new body.

Angels were pretty quick studies, by the way.

Having a soul speeded all that up with Cas' new empathy. When did Dean start feeling weird about that extra presence within the angel's fire? His own new angelic body was the one he'd had to learn what to do with so it wasn't milling around awkwardly while his body was getting to the crucial moment. But their accidental Nephilism had merely made Dean "more."

It had made Cas different.

Where the all-angel Castiel had been pulled through their bonding process, resisting all the way, the new, ensouled Cas would stare at him with two sets of eyes after they were done, trying to assure himself that Dean was happy, that he wouldn't wander again. Cas needed things now, needed Dean, and this was exactly the situation he'd tried to prevent with women: disappointing someone.

"Don't disappoint me, son," his father had said before each fight once he started hunting. Before he went out with a girl so he would think twice before getting her pregnant. "I'm disappointed in you, Dean," his father would say with an averted gaze if he let something happen to Sam or partied too much.

Dean Winchester was not supposed to be a disappointment to anyone in their high-stakes hunter world. Once he found out the whole universe was watching him, waiting for him to screw up, the big Winchester destiny became one great big Dad. Just like his father used to watch his every move, magnifying tiny inconsistencies in the way he held his weapon or fired a shot so that his nearly superhuman marksmanship—better than his own ex-Marine father's—was always overshadowed by an infinitesimal list to the right within the bull's eye.

"People are counting on you to do better than that, son, to push yourself past what you think you can do, because if this was about thinking, well, shit, who would have thought a Windigo was real?"

If this was about thinking, they'd find someone else to do the job, Dean filled in. Having been so young when all this crap happened to their family, his mind never learned to fight the weird, which is what his father was trying to do with his crusade against the chaos that had claimed his wife. Not like Sam, who thought this whole family vendetta didn't stand up to what his good mind decided it wanted for itself.

Dean could track nasties, gank ghosts and anticipate the motives of spirits like Mr. and Mrs. Rain because he had instinct. And instinct wasn't something you earned so you couldn't be proud of it. Sam earned everything he did with the Navajo, and getting in with those folks was pretty hard. Even with their gods, Dean's instinct had shown itself to be a poor substitute for Sam's smarts and commitment. He was Little Brother, now and forever, who, in most versions of the myths, was the one who collected bits of flesh and blood from the older brother's kills. Kind of like the way Dean was rolling around in the shards of his life, his mind, and sometimes, his flesh itself.

Commitment. Was all this, ending up in Hell with his different parts talking to each other until he had to tell his shins to keep it down so his collarbones could have their say for a change, was it about fear of the commitment he used to joke about as a greater threat than a werewolf and a shapeshifter combined? Dean Winchester was famous for his wandering eye, after all.

Dean's eye had never stopped wandering, in fact. He'd stopped paying attention to it for awhile when he came to New York, but it had gone on undressing even more people than ever before. He still looked at chicks. They still made him hot, but he liked imagining a guy thrown in there, too, him watching and being watched. And the guys. Oh man, there were a lot of men to look at in the gay Mecca of the east coast. It was easy to have whole conversation with the right kind of guy, just using their eyes. What would it be like if we-? was all transmitted with the flick of an iris.

Each one of these involuntary daydreams was proof that he didn't deserve Cas. The angel did everything but bend over backwards to make his partner feel cared for, and he would have done that, too, if that was Dean's bent these days.

"What? What was it?" Dean's mouth shrieked somewhere while he got his injection of torture somewhere that hadn't lost all feeling yet. Why did he fuck up everything he ever tried to do?

A long string of images of him getting fed up doing the right thing and ending up on the barroom floor or on the wrong end of somebody's fist came to him. It was always the forbidden, calling to him, two girls at once, or a woman who he knew would clean out all his cash while he was asleep, or playing around with handcuffs and the silver chain he carried in case he stumbled on a werewolf, hitting on a girl whose boyfriend was the size of Toledo, messing with hunter women, though his dad warned him about creating bad karma in that community. As soon as part of him told him he shouldn't do it, he felt an irresistible compulsion to do it. Like the many times going on a bender the night before making his appearance as a buttoned-up FBI agent before a grisly crime scene. Improv was hard, don't let anyone kid you otherwise, but again, it relied on instinct so it didn't really count as anything other than him squeaking through life by the seat of his pants.

"You got the gift of the gab," his father had said when he started contributing to the family lie-telling business early on. But his father battered his way through situations because of the smoldering intensity of his mission. His wasn't merely gab, but the truth.

"Jeez, I never realized how much I still compared myself to him," one part of Dean's brain said to an audience of the body parts that hadn't disappeared in some fog. "I thought by doing this thing Dad could never understand, the Big Taboo of going gay on top of an even bigger taboo nobody predicted enough to name, I would stop being owned by him." After all, isn't that they way kissing boys worked for the Other Dean? And Cas had stopped being the good soldier boy he'd been for millennia, just by taking the forbidden step of falling in love with a human.

But Dean was never able to stop pushing things. Sam always said so. "You stopped caring about hunting a while back, brother, but you still take the dumbest risks because you can't let anything go."

It was true. Even now, downstairs, he was worrying at these stones that had gotten inside his mental shoe, scraping against the brain as it rattled in his skull. "Why?" he heard his voice muttering somewhere.

"Shut up, you're the one that fucks everything up, questioning everything."

"No, you're the one who fucks it up, by being allergic to thinking."

He was led around Hell like a prize poodle and all he could think was that it felt so weird to have all his muscles moving in concert when he felt like each bit of himself wanted to go in different directions. He watched his feet in case they started skittering out from underneath him like two crabs going in opposite directions.

On these excursions the demons were poking him and staring, saying something he didn't catch. "They've never seen such a failure as you," said one sector of his brain, which was carved up like a turkey in different occupied zones.

"They've never seen a person go guano like this, man."

"Dude, you are screwed once your arms walk away from your hands, your ass walks away from your legs, because you're going to be tortured in fifty different places at once, each section of Hell with their own piece of Winchester to flog. You're a real pass-around-Patty, isn't that the way you like it? They'll pass you out as prizes for the best fingernail-remover and most creative user of the melon-baller. And the underworld is a big place."

He really saw how big it was this time around. There was no way to see all of Heaven at once—at least, none of the angels claimed to have seen it all. And each person's salvation was by its nature somewhat private. But the halls and galleries full of people alone in their pain that Dean saw as he was walked on his crab-feet by Valac's leash, there were millions of them. Or maybe there seemed to be more because everything started looking the same which made it multiply. He got lost looking at the bubbles in the reconstituted orange juice Valac had to wheedle him into drinking several times a day.

Once he brought him ice cream. Of course it wouldn't be Hell if you could have Haagen Dazs, but the king of Hell went so far as to obtain one of those freeze dried tubes of ice cream they made for astronauts. He'd watched with bated breath while Dean stared at the tube, unable to make his arms obey his command to move. Valac had ended up feeding it to him on a spoon. It didn't taste like anything, but he acted like it did.

Dean smiled in thanks because he felt sorry for this person who still expected something of him, he wasn't sure what. The demon contorted his face in what they both supposed was a smile back. Hosting a material being was difficult for Hell, where any liquid couldn't remain healthful for longer than a few minutes. Dean saw the books on human nutrition mixed in with manuals on caring for your first puppy that Valac brought in the room sometimes and flipped through, frowning. For a while the demon had him in cedar chips as if he were a hamster, with a little ball with a bell in it to play with.

It made him ashamed, now, to think of how many hours he batted that ball around as if it were the most miraculous thing he'd ever seen. If he'd had a tail he would have wagged it.

Sometimes Dean was dressed up in his tunic and posed on a velvet seat the head demon confided he stole from a high-end escort service. When his tormentor attached the feathered wings and compared him with a picture he kept locked up, Dean felt vaguely content that he could make anyone that happy. He was good for something after all.

That idea disappeared when he thought he heard Etienne. It made him sure he was crazy because the tiny Spaniard was dead by now. Body and soul dead, because of him.

"I'm so sorry, Balthazar," he whispered with lips that would barely move. The angel, for all his show of not caring about anyone, had really been there for him when his angelic body first began developing. Balthazar was too smart to let Etienne see him watching, like Cas did, but Dean knew the angel was fiercely protective of his regained love.

"Oh man, Dean, you got somebody's true love disintegrated after he waited over a century to get him back? That's cold, dude, how can you look at yourself?"

Valac brought the mirror over to show how long his hair had gotten, to let him see what he looked like in the latest chiffon and feather outfit that seemed to be the Hell-equivalent of kinky lingerie. All Dean could do was to stare stupidly at the face he was told was his. But he didn't recognize anything. Beyond the red hair that hung part way to his shoulders, the empty blue eyes, the thin features and the makeup Valac was experimenting with, he couldn't believe that this person who looked like a drag queen junkie was the one who had once been destined for a starring role in the Apocalypse.

When Cas finally came for him, the light had spilled out from under the door and was slipping towards him like a bright puddle. To dissolve, to think no more. He sat very still, barely breathing, waiting for the stillness to become complete.

A violent jolt messed it all up.

"I'm going to find my arms somewhere and throttle whoever made the whole rusty machine start up again!" he cursed, searching for where his limbs had gotten to.

The large Slavic man with blonde hair cut short to his skull stepped into the room and stared at him.

Dean stared back. "You never seen human Jell-o before? Move it along, buddy" he tried to transmit to his lips but they sort of squirmed around and lost interest.

Castiel. He heard the name Castiel. It took a superhuman amount of effort to put together the sudden jump-start to his system with the stranger's face and Cas.

Cas.

Only Cas would be so naive as to give him another chance.

He heard Cas' voice join all the other sounds of his toes and his knees and his memories and his Dad's stern voice and Etienne and all the other ingredients in the soup that was on a sluggish boil in his skull.

He had no idea what Cas was trying to say, either out loud or in his head. His brain was stuck on this one fact-Cas was here, he was here-his angelic eyes suddenly flew open and saw Cas in his entirety, shrunk into the right size to fit into his hamster-nest.

Remember my ball, I want to take my ball with me, he was trying to transmit, but it must not have gotten through and then he was being squashed into this random Russian dude.

What the-? was all he could think over and over while he melted into his own little piece of Heaven, the angel Castiel. And then he didn't think anything for a long time because he slipped into a blissful sleep.

When he woke up inside Cas, his questions bubbled in his small corner of the huge, old entity that was his lover. It was like he'd been given his own cubbyhole in the New York Public Library. Millennia of memories and facts and skills were neatly shelved and stretched farther than Dean's battered mind could comprehend.

He slept again and resumed the thought upon waking.

Dean had made some subtle inquiries about the likelihood of Cas being able to fit into him as a vessel again, and everyone told him the same thing. Jamming two souls into one body, which is what ensouled angels like Cas did now, was hard enough. Balthazar was the only changed one who seemed to exist comfortably in the same vessel long term, these days. But an angelic body into another, slightly smaller one? Plus two souls? There was simply nowhere to put everything, Balthazar had told him once, and his original lessons on angel anatomy still made more sense to Dean than anything he'd read in the couple of Enochian treatises he'd tried to decode on the subject.

He roamed around inside Cas when he felt well enough, and thought of something he'd heard on some late-night nature program, that a stegosaurus had a separate nerve center to control its legs, like a brain-outpost because the main brain was so far away. He could sense his body staying in one place somewhere in Cas' huge civilization, but Dean's consciousness was definitely moving around, peeking into different memories that he couldn't make sense of at all because they came at him in a riot of sounds and shapes that couldn't be decoded without the angel's awareness. But the different files seemed to govern themselves, closing doors when he was done looking through the contents. "Make yourself at home," was what he sensed from this region of Cas, but Cas himself was somewhere else, and he spent unknown hours reassembling his sense of self in this warm place.

"There you are," Castiel finally said, or a version of his angelic body did. "I was looking for you."

"I've been dating a stegosaurus all this time," was all Dean could say before falling into sync with Cas' thoughts, which moved totally differently than his own, in some way.

"You want to know how I fit you in here. As you can see, there's a lot of room," the angel said.

"I'll say," Dean said, still not over the sheer volume he'd been intimate with. He'd barely scratched the surface. "How do you remember anything? It's like the biggest library in the world down there."

"I've never thought about it. What would you like me to remember?"

"The dinosaurs," Dean said at random.

After five minutes of having his fragile mind blown watching actual brontosaurii and pterodactyls, Dean said, "Hey, Cas, you still here?"

In a few moments he heard a response from somewhere, "Yes, I'm actually working at the moment, but let me know when you find another section that interests you."

After some time of exploring how his stegosaur-boyfriend worked, Dean called out. "Hey, you know, I've figured it all out. If you can take a sec away from your official business."

The area of Cas' awareness where he was located shone a little brighter, and after a long while, he saw Cas' image of himself again. "I can talk to you while I participate in these dull maneuvers, but I'd rather talk face to face, if that's all right. It's hard to find you in here."

Before Dean could protest, he was extricated from Cas' body.

"That was not nearly as easy as going in," Dean's body collapsed on the couch in Cas' room, and he cursed at realizing he was still wearing some filmy negligee. "Can you find me something to wear that doesn't make me look like demon-bait? I can't move."

His wounds had healed while he was inside Cas, but he was "Insanely hungry. Protein shake, on the couch, stat." The angel bustled around their space and helped Dean into the jeans and shirt that swam on him they were so big. "Don't let me see how terrible I look," he begged as he slurped down a shake and then some orange juice laced with liquid vitamins. "Was I like in a medically induced coma in you or something?"

"That's one way of thinking of it. I suddenly understood that you had been nostalgic for the closeness we felt in Las Vegas, that you wanted to be part of a whole with me. Then I saw how you could fit in quite easily." Cas' eyes did that x-ray scanner thing they did sometimes. "You might benefit from intravenous nutrition."

"Whatever, I don't care where you take me, but let me say this. You're right, but you're half-right."

"About the IV treatment?" The angel was puzzled.

"No, about me wanting to be part of a whole. Yes, that's what it took a couple months of Hellfire to make clear to me, but there's another side to it. I'm not whole, for starters. I've never felt at peace with myself, so when you came in and then left it's like the hole I tried to plug up with sex and booze and fighting, it got bigger by a thousand. And anything I did was like a drop in the bucket; it could never fill that space where you were. Hell, from what I saw in sector 412-B, second shelf of your first millennium, you really are that big."

"I'm sorry, I should have known," Cas apologized automatically.

Dean made a frustrated noise. "How could you? Have you ever used a vessel with an addictive personality before? That was my whole thing, I don't know what it was for Etienne."

"What does he have to do with this?" the angel asked frostily.

"This is the second part, Cas. Look at me." The angel was wearing another big Russian, this one dark-haired, and the angelic eyes stared at him through the light green irises. "You hold on awfully tight. Hey, I'm not saying don't hold on," Dean positioned Cas' vessel-arm around his shoulder and panted from the effort. "But from what I saw inside of you, there's so much of you after several millennia, that you can't keep track of it all with your main consciousness. You'd go nuts. You wouldn't be able to focus on the present."

Dean rested for a moment. He hated being this weak. "The big you, Cas that's seeing new things and interacting with the outside world and the you that remembers the French Revolution, they're both you, but you can't really explain how you keep all yourself together. Believe me, I've been watching myself come apart at the seams, so I know it's not easy keeping little me together, much less somebody as old as you"

"You've not made an issue of the age difference in the past," Cas interjected irritably.

"This is what I mean, Thursday." The nickname worked its usual magic. "You like, pounce on the slightest thing as either proof that things are going well, or things are going to shit. I never thought I would be giving anyone lessons in being laid back, but you've got to accept that I'm different every day, and believe it or not, you are too. Even if you weren't shaped by new experiences, you have trillions of old ones in the hopper, waiting to come up."

He looked at the scowl facing him. "Is this a cultural difference between angels and humans, or something? Because I'm sure that I've heard Bobby talking about some of his weird Asian esoteric studies, and there's some paradox in Buddhism or Taoism or one of those isms. Like the universe is in a grain of sand and the grain of sand is in the universe? All I mean is, I'm going to change, so you got to go with the flow, the all of me, and hope that most of the pieces of me are pretty good, too. Fuck, they can't get worse than they've been."

He made a wry face. "We haven't talked about it, but I'll grow older until I die at some point, and then we'll keep our thing going in Heaven. But not if you keep holding on to some image of me—maybe the one you rescued from Hell, or the one from Las Vegas or the one you missed when you were in Heaven-and comparing everything I do to that. I'm always going to be a disappointment, then, and I've learned the hard way that I'll do basically anything to avoid disappointing someone. Even being a demon's Barbie doll." He put his hair behind his ears. "You've never said—do you hate this?"

"I like it when it's combed, so let's get you in the show—"

Castiel stared at the woefully thin slice of a Dean Winchester on the couch.

The slice cleared his throat. "Hello? I'm having my first serious relationship talk of my life, not sure if you had any of those somewhere in your archives."

"I should have understood this right when you started explaining it, Forgive me, Dean, for missing your reference to the wave-particle duality theory."

It was Dean's turn to stare. "Huh?"

Then he fainted.

He woke up in a hospital bed with an IV and some worried-looking man he had to close his eyes to recognize as Cas. "This is getting really confusing, you switching vessels so much," he complained.

"I had an idea about that," the man smiled. "Why don't we stick with one for awhile?"

"Do I get to pick?" Dean asked eagerly.

"Certainly," Castiel said. "When you're well enough."

Upon his discharge from the hospital, Dean was waiting for Cas outside and began scanning the street for likely looking collaborators, when he felt an odd sensation.

He felt whole.

"How did you do that?" he asked while Cas walked them towards the subway.

"The metaphor you used was actually literally true. There was an 'angel-shaped hole,' a way that I could fit in, your new angelic body notwithstanding. I have my theories as to—"

"There's places I want to take you!" Dean struggled to take control. Everything was so much _more_, so much deeper and more satisfying when he and Cas shared it together.

"I'm not sure about some of those ideas," Castiel thought back at him as he waded through the good times Dean wanted them to have in this body. "You're not nearly well enough for most of that."

Dean was lost in the possibilities….

"Dean. Dean."

Castiel's thoughts flowed insistently at Dean, recalling him to the Thanksgiving dinner at Bobby's. "I'm not participating if you're still badmouthing me," Dean said to the table.

"They want to hear the story of how the angelic mission concluded. You always say I leave out all the important parts, so I need your help."

"But I was just starting to reminisce about some of the things we shared in this body," Dean thought, and he felt their body react even more to the memories.

"Stop that! We have tonight to be a shameless tart," Cas said. He'd been studying human dirty-talk but claimed it was harder than differential calculus.

"Oh all right." They followed Bobby and Sam out to the parlor. "I remember being as stuffed as you guys look."

"This was just a warm-up," Bobby said tipsily. "Tomorrow is the true gourmet's test."

"I'll supervise the hungover kitchen duties for Thanksgiving part II, brother, if you promise to keep yourself checked in while you carry Gina and everybody."

"I'm here, I'm awake," Dean said as they stretched their legs before the fire. "Whatever Cas tells you, I was the one who figured it out."

They smiled together with one mouth, and began the story.


	30. Chapter 30

"But I really need to go back to work," Cas protested on the day their story took place. "I was hoping you could help. You see things in a different way than I do," the angel said in a rush.

"Give us one day together before we have to go back to reality," begged Dean. "Let's celebrate that I'm still in one piece and now you can be in it too." Since they were in the same body he couldn't bat his eyelashes, so Dean settled for a barrage of his favorite memories with Cas.

He felt the angelic turbo engines inside him start to purr.

"All right, let me send a message to Balthazar," Cas thought warmly at him while he let Dean direct their body. He sent out the coded Enochian message to Balthazar and by the time he was done Dean had them reappearing in a certain section of Brooklyn. "Who do you know here?" the angel asked.

"Nobody, I hope," Dean said, opening a nondescript door between two stores. He scrutinized the buzzer labels and then pressed one labeled "T. Sharif." "Tarik sent me," Dean just managed to say before Castiel wrested control back.

"Who is this Tarik? When did you have this affair?" the angel demanded inside their brain while their feet automatically entered the opened door.

"No idea if that's even a real person. It's just a code, Thursday. Hit the fourth floor button, will ya?"

Cas was scrutinizing the environment that revealed itself behind a door left ajar.

And in turn, they were being given a thorough once-over by the men in the room. A murmur went around indicating that many of them were far from indifferent to the new arrival that they mistakenly thought to be singular.

"How dare that man call you a hot piece of ass?" Castiel thought angrily.

"Calm down, babe. They're calling you a hot piece, too," Dean said. As he'd hoped, the novelty of that idea quieted his companion for the moment.

A number of men were draped around each other, and a single man emerged from one of the rooms down the corridor. One individual extricated himself and walked up to them. "Do you know what you want or do you need someone to help you figure it out?" he asked with a frank stare.

"What sort of an establishment is this? This reminds me of the club we're working so hard to shut down, Dean! How could you bring me to a purveyor of smut?"

"I'll take a Triple S, please," Dean got out of their mouth while his lover was obsessing.

"Of course you will," the man said, clapping his hands three times. A number of men, all attractive, all large, stepped forward. "Your choice."

Dean contemplated all the possibilities for a few long moments so Cas could share the moment.

"You like the one with the brown hair and gray eyes," Castiel observed, feeling the excitement building inside the body that was taking out their wallet. The man's large hand closed around a credit card.

"Sometimes people get carried away, but we can do a triple S for starters," he said with a smirk.

"What on earth did you just purchase?" the angel said with a mixture of horror and titillation that wasn't lost on Dean.

"Triple S means Safe Sub Special. I don't care how well your x-ray vision can see inside a person's body, I would never do anything risky in a place like this." They were following the man into a room, which turned out to be anonymous but clean. "As long as you stick with the game plan, you're the boss," Dean said to the man.

"You got that right. Call me Paul," the man said.

A couple of hours later they stumbled out of the room and retrieved their credit card. "Satisfied?" the man in charge asked.

The whimper that came in response was all Cas.

With a smile playing around their lips, Dean used his experience in these matters to make his body recover quickly.

He could tell that Cas was psychologically still reeling from what they had just experienced together.

When they were down on the street, Dean took control long enough to head them to a bar so they could savor a very relaxed drink together.

"No matter what activities we have engaged in together, I have never felt _that_ before," Cas finally transmitted down a neuron that felt like a noodle.

"Like what?" Dean was enjoying being right almost as much as he enjoyed sharing that experience.

"How did you know about this place?! Have you been there before?!" his lover suddenly demanded.

"No, but I asked around the last time I got back from Hell, in case I got desperate."

"I'm glad you didn't sink to this level," Cas said, sinking onto a bar stool.

"Then I started hanging out with Etienne," Dean said softly.

They sat very still.

"But the good news is, now you can understand why I like it, and we can do it together any time you like."

He felt the tension as Cas thought about a strange man doing those things to Dean.

"So it's different than when you're using a vessel on me?" Dean pursued.

Cas changed the subject. "I really must return to work, Dean. Grace has entrusted me with this mission, for whatever reason, and I must redeem myself."

"Take me with you," Dean said suddenly.

"You as a vessel? You're a little distracting, Dean," Cas ran one hand lightly down a thigh and they both shuddered.

"Then let's find a vessel. I can help."

Dean intercepted Cas' thought that no one would be surprised to see Dean in such a place as the Hell's Kitchen club.

To escape from the sadness that gripped them both at that thought, Cas downed the rest of their drink and conveyed them to Balthazar's and Etienne's room.

"Hello, you're looking well, both of you," Balthazar said. "I'm afraid you've come at a bad time, however. Etienne and I are having an argument."

Time stood still as Dean heard Etienne's thoughts very clearly for a moment.

When they established they were very much like his own, they grinned.

"I'm trying to convince Cas to let me come on your mission, too," Dean said.

The sudden chill in the room shook him up.

It was coming from an otherwise pleasant-faced Balthazar.

Cas' consciousness finally beat through to Dean. "I really don't care to see you engage in any intimate pastimes with Etienne, or see you converse with your minds, for that matter, but I should warn you that Balthazar will destroy you for doing anything that endangers his mate."

"I don't plan on endangering anyone at that dive," Dean said aloud. "Besides, Balthazar could teach us all a thing or two."

In the face of three consciousnesses who knew much about his history, Balthazar relented a bit.

"Are you sure you're ready, Dean? You've been very ill, and you're the only one of us who has a demonstrated weakness for that infernal music."

.

"You've gotta let me get some action, man, I haven't ganked anybody for months," Dean begged, suddenly ready for action. "And I was thinking an earpiece with all my favorite music would be a fallback distraction. Stairway to Heaven? Some Jimi? It's the opposite of that crappy techno music anyway."

"But the two of you in one body seems like a bad idea." The pleasure Cas and Dean got from sharing a vessel was vaguely unnerving for Balthazar, and even more so for the other Nephilim.

"We actually don't plan on traveling in one vessel," Castiel said. "Dean has some sort of plan that he is masking from me somehow."

"Actually I'm not. Haven't you learned by now that the Winchester way is to improv the hell out of things?"

"Well, I'm tired of interrogating angels who have been frequenting the club, anyway." Balthazar was also an angel of action, and the stalled investigation was wearing on him. "I don't think the demons have any idea how to extract intelligence from their clients. It's all a matter of creating a market and getting people hooked on their product. Which they are alarmingly clever at."

Etienne raised his eyebrow at Dean. "When my lover said that being an angel was not nonstop glamour, I had no idea of the truth behind his words. I've been watching these two question these angels who remind me of absinthe addicts, so immersed in their search for the next intoxication are they. All this intimidation and tricky talk Balthazar does so well. My experience with Heaven thus far is that there's no need for someone of my personality in it."

There was a tense pause. "Not that I prefer the alternative," he rushed to say.

(Cas and Dean exchanged the thought that they were not the only couple walking on thin ice together.)

"You told me yourself straight away, my love," Etienne was trying to warm up his chilly mate, "that if Heaven chose a Gypsy intellectual as one of their saviors, it had to be because there was something in my makeup that they needed. I, too, despise being locked up and waiting, as we have been. Trust me."

Etienne loosed his most smoldering gaze and Balthazar's cynicism dropped like a curtain.

"All right, everybody, follow me," Dean said, "We've got to find a vessel for Cas and run a couple other errands."

Finding a strapping vessel for Cas was the least of their concerns, but after they obtained a state of the art wireless earpiece that would filter Zeppelin and Ozzy and all his other favorites into his ear, Dean recalled the two angels as they automatically turned to Hell's Kitchen.

"We've got one more errand in the West Village."

He and Etienne were studiously avoiding each other's gaze as they walked through the door.

The storefront that advertised custom-made leather goods, all pg-rated, opened into a much-larger back room full of every fetish costume you could imagine, and some you wish you hadn't.

"Did you normally make Sam dress up in a costume when you were out pretending to be someone else?" Cas asked nervously.

"Never from a place like this," Dean replied. He and Etienne were roaming around the racks with a purpose.

A salesclerk approached them and all their selections were placed in Dean's hands because a box tied with a black satin ribbon was deposited in the older man's arms. "I do hope it fits. If not, I can make any required adjustments."

The two men disappeared behind dressing room doors that shut on two surprised angelic faces that waited a long time for the mysterious transformation to take place.

"I don't know, Dean, I'm from a generation that saw women's ankles as obscene. I feel a little underdressed," Etienne said, emerging with his custom outfit and a smile that was anything but uncomfortable.

"I feel just right," Dean said in the outfit he'd chosen.

Their partners were undecided. Etienne had on tight toreador pants that laced up the side with some clever embroidery that showed peeks of skin all the way up. He had a tailcoat with an intricate leather harness underneath; a perfect mixture of elegance and come hither, or so Dean had said when they designed it together in the midst of their S/M period in Dean's apartment.

Balthazar's expressions finally gave way to an interest that just covered his memories of dark pastimes delivering his lover to him in an envelope. "I'm going to pick out some shoes, darling, like the ones I bought you when I discovered you were walking around in elegant boots with cardboard soles."

Castiel, meanwhile, was still not recovered from the shock of seeing Dean in a garment that the angel couldn't even make sense of.

"Hey, Cas, what say we see if this easy access zipper is as easy as they say," Dean ran the hand that belonged to Cas for the night all along the small yet complicated outfit that was mostly laces and zippers and chains, but easy on the cloth.

"I will not let you go out like this!" Cas exploded.

Dean hit him with a barrage of image from their afternoon at Sharif's.

"At the very least put this on," Castiel grabbed a leather trench coat from a rack.

"Of course, babe, will you zip this last zipper first? It's the only one I can't reach," Dean said.

The angel complied without a word.

Dean paid for it all with his gambling account. "Can I expense this?" he asked thoughtfully.

"By all means," Balthazar said. "Submitting this itemized receipt to Remy should be very amusing."

They zapped themselves to the sidewalk outside the club, this time with no cloaking sigils.

It was a Saturday night so there was a line of hopeful humans trying to get in. Dean liked to think that he and Etienne got to the front of the line on their own power, but it was also true that Cas was pushing them through with the force of a battering ram, so deep was his shame that Dean was being seen in this state of undress on a street.

"You're back," the bouncer said to Dean. "You've got a lot of fans since you last came by."

Balthazar's well-hidden protectiveness wasn't so hidden anymore. He pulled Etienne through the crowd by a hand entwined in his lover's harness. The Spaniard smiled broadly and reveled in the possessive gestures, looking more delicately pretty than ever.

Cas was having a harder time, because Dean's admirers were greater in number and in force.

"You're back!"

"I have all your photo galleries."

"Your hair's so long," one drag queen raked her long nails through it.

Cas jerked Dean roughly away from the offending hand. "You will not lay one finger on him," he snarled. The drag queen gave a sly smile to Dean and winked before backing off. The same scene was repeated again and again. Dean could tell that his partner had forgotten they were on a mission, which was just the way he wanted it. Whatever he sensed was supposed to happen tonight, it wasn't going to be by military maneuver.

"How can you just let these filthy-minded strangers act like they have a right to you?" Cas demanded after one person admiringly traced the series of laces and chains and zippers that were what covered the bits of skin that were covered.

"Remember the nice time we had…" Dean began.

A murmur went through the crowd, and everyone looked up.

"I should have seen that coming a mile away," Dean murmured, face to face with the video recording of his Triple S treatment from Sharif's. All the thoughts were trickling out of his head except the one that he had apparently forgotten to check the box for the privacy guarantee.

Dean knew that in supernatural circles images and videos of him, sponsored by Valac and Barry, his human photographer were hot items. But only a few had been painstakingly doctored to compensate for the extra light from his angelic energy, which otherwise made him look overexposed on camera.

Angels and demons didn't care about the aesthetics of the image —the glow of light meant it was an authentic angel-like creature who was stooping so low as to be tortured for kicks. And therein was the enchantment.

Now, the majority of the crowd was watching his glowing features go through motions he didn't want to watch himself needing, much less watch other people viewing it as jackoff material.

Dean felt himself sink low, the idea that he was leading a mission completely forgotten. The cheers from the crowd, what he needed done to him, what he deserved—that was all that was real. "Look at yourself, man, you're the angel bait you never wanted to be, and the demon bait you know you wanna be." He thrived off the concreteness of the recording, of his shame at wearing that boytoy outfit. He started to feel the music affect him for the first time.

"There is nothing else."

"There is nowhere else."

Cas felt his lover slip.

He was thrust back to the first time he met Dean in Hell. What had been done to the man called Dean then was a terrible thing, terrible because the loop Crowley had him stuck in was so small for a soul, especially that soul.

Castiel had reached down and pulled him out of perdition, but Dean kept falling right back into perdition not matter how hard he tried to make him happy. The angel had left Dean to his own devices once, and now he knew the stakes were too high to let these stumbles back into Hell to keep happening. His beloved would disintegrate, and there was no guarantee that Grace would supply another miracle on the level of what was done for the vanished Etienne.

Cas' borrowed hand reached out tentatively. Let him not fall into darkness again. There is so much more for us-

The touch didn't reach Dean, who gave a wan smile at Castiel's efforts. He was slipping through both sets of fingers wielded by the angel. To Cas' horror, Dean was starting to look transparent.

"No! Dean! Don't leave me!"

He shook what was still solid enough to grasp.

That same thin smile was still in place, the one that Dean had been wearing when they found him all done up like a doll in Hell.

"No! Not after everything you put me through!" Cas' rage slipped into place, and he couldn't tell if it was a virtue or not. He sent his partner an avalanche of images: of saving Dean, of trying to love him in just he right way and failing. It was meant to be a proof of his affections, but he was getting angrier by the minute. Far away the music was still pulsing.

"I even went through these bought pleasures with you today! That's not what i want, and you made me see and feel these things I never wanted to know about."

The feeling he'd been trying to suppress all day came boiling up. That sordid experience really had been the last straw. He hated things like that! Dean was trying his best to turn him into a demon, his preferred sort of lover, apparently, and Cas wouldn't have it.

He looked at the disgusting video that had Dean and dozens of strangers transfixed.

"How could you drag me into this muck? I'm an angel of the Lord!" Cas was filled with warring emotions in this soul he still couldn't handle very well.

He raised the hand that was his for the night.

The slap reverberated in the room.

Castiel was only vaguely aware that the eyes were now watching the live show being provided by himself and his mate. What specific acts they were performing didn't matter. Just like when he told Dean that his elbow would suffice, it really didn't matter, Cas was reasoning while the rest of him was all harsh movement. Because this was that moment he liked best, when Dean's soul was opening to him all across his skin, just like it did that first time.

Once Cas had a hand on that tenderness, he knew what to do. It was like CPR, except much more violent. The angel had jump-started this soul before. He could do it again. "Just don't enjoy it," he ordered himself.

In this dark space Dean was helpless to even say yes, say please. It was like one of those myths where the person under the spell couldn't ask for what they needed, they had to wait to be set free. That's it, he was like that Native warrior who had been turned into a big black bear because he didn't trust anyone, and now he'd been alone his whole life, hiding behind that darkness wrapping around him. He was the monster, more than anything he'd ever hunted. Please love me for who I am, the black bear said.

His heart was thudding in the blackness. Please, Cas, don't make me be alone here anymore. Don't make me try to keep this space filled when anything I put in it always runs out eventually.

Through their sympathetic bond, Dean could feel Etienne locked in his own wrenching conflict with Balthazar.

"You dumbass, this is your idea of being the leader of a mission?" Dean had just enough time to mock himself. "Hey everybody, let's improv ourselves into a miserable evening. We just might save the world."

Some place where Dean had been alone for a very long time, maybe forever, some dark corridor where part of himself had been abandoned… he felt a barricade begin to splinter under Cas' blows.

"Dean!" "Cas!" There was a contact, and an explosion.

Suddenly they were in a bright garden with a courtyard all overgrown with the most beautiful flowers Dean had ever seen.

"What the hell?" he said.

"Guess again," said the fairy-like form that appeared in the middle of the portico where Balthazar, Etienne, Castiel and Dean were all looking around confusedly.

"If it's you we're dealing with, it must be Heaven," Balthazar said drily to Grace.

"I think your very intelligent partner has discovered that everything is Heaven, if you look at it in a certain way," Grace retorted.

Dean, now wearing his favorite pair of jeans and a t-shirt, was padding around barefoot trying to place something. "This is Heaven, I mean, not the Heaven where there's administrative offices and stuff, but the Heaven I believed in as a kid."

He watched a teenage girl with pigtails holding a small fire in one hand, and a tiny waterfall in the other. Every time she mixed them together, a different thing popped out.. She had a small pile of random objects—a pink carnation, a loaf of bread, a small yellow bird-and kept repeating the exercise, her face full of wonder.

A rabbi ran by, chased by a laughing Buddha.

The sun and the moon shared the sky.

The place stretched farther than his eyes could see, and he sensed it was pretty empty. Farther off Dean could see a man in a security guard outfit playing with butterflies.

"You were saying," Grace prompted from where she fluttered by his ear. "It's a different sort of Heaven?"

Castiel seemed to be back in his Jimmy form, but in addition to the trench coat he was staring at a whip in his hands.

"This is not forbidden?" Cas asked suddenly of Grace. "Hurt and humiliation are wrong."

"Anyone else care to venture a theory? Class?" Grace prompted their group.

"It's Heaven but you're not alone here," Dean continued. He'd always had a horror of living an eternity in his own little room of fantasies, and had been very relieved when his angelic transformation meant he could move around more freely in Heaven.

"There are shadows here," Etienne spoke for the first time. "Everything is so rich and textured, with a depth to it that is absent in the Heaven I've seen. Sorry, my love," he turned to Balthazar.

"And you finally let me in," Balthazar said to his mate, caressing the cheeks that had remained unbruised.

Etienne was stroking a velvety orchid. "It's like what I see in my head when I try to write poetry."

"That's it!" Balthazar exclaimed, laying a hand on his lover's back. "This is precisely like your dreams. I had never seen anything to equal them, in all my travels, until I visited you while you were dreaming."

Dean was standing openmouthed before a collection of animals in fancy dress who were doing some odd dance. "This is some Alice in Wonderland shit," he began. "Was that part of your required reading, Cas? Cas?"

"Touch nothing. None of you. And don't put anything in your mouth!" the angel ordered his companions, staring at a point in the distance. "We must leave this place at once."

"You may certainly leave, but you've already sampled it," Grace said.

Castiel crumpled to his knees. "No, I don't want to be cast out of the Heavenly Host! Besides, you have to decide to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and I have done no such," he became aware of the whip in his hand once more, "thing." He flung it from himself.

"So this is Hell," Dean amended. "But, like, deluxe Hell, and you get here by doing naughty things in the bedroom?"

"Evidently that is one route," Grace replied. "Perhaps there is someone who can explain better than I."

A familiar figure walked up to their group.

"Hello," Remiel said with his usual stiff bow.

"You? I didn't know you were into S&M, Remiel," Dean burst out.

There was a silence in which Castiel and Balthazar expected their new leader to explode at such a suggestion.

Instead, he laughed. "Some of us insist upon following our own path," Remiel said with a rare good nature. "Some of us can't help it," he added more softly, just to Dean.

"Would you care to explain, Remy? There's a rather important assignment you've had us working on night and day back on earth, and I'd hate to disappoint," Balthazar was getting impatient with all the confusion.

"I've been coming here for some time, without knowing what I was doing," Remiel said, enveloping Dean in his attention as he had once before. "If you look, there are people flitting in and out of here all the time, but for most it's too fast to even remember."

They all watched what had seemed to be a bit of shimmer to the air. It was actually people, people appearing with identical expressions of wonder, most for a few seconds at a time.

"It was by paying attention to you that I began to piece it together," the head angel continued.

"Me? I don't know much more than my own name on a good day," Dean protested.

"Exactly," Remiel said eagerly. "And yet you are one of the youngest souls to have reached this place with any degree of mastery. You're walking around with your friends and can probably stay as long as you like." He surveyed the man's blank look with fondness. "Dean, you've managed to combine Heaven and Hell in a stable mixture. It's something like cold fusion for theologians. Let's just say that you could probably answer the age-old question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin after this feat."

Castiel was still trembling, gazing at the Tree. "But my soul, my angelic standing, I'm all right?"

"Oh, loosen up, Cas, you'll be fine as long as you don't fall back on your good soldier boy routine," Remiel said to everyone's surprise. "This is a new thing, or at least, new to most of us." He cocked his head at the fairy that was floating around during this conversation. "Apparently this is where the Graces from the various dimensions gather for a coffee klatsch once every so often."

Suddenly they all became aware of another group visible in the garden, which immediately looked, as one, at Dean's group. Though they wore diverse forms, there was some unifying characteristic that made them identifiable as a manifestation of Grace.

"It's the smugness," Bslthazar mouthed behind their Grace's back, and they all laughed.

"You're not here to simply enjoy yourselves," she snapped. "And yes, you do need to complete your mission. Dean, I trust we can keep following your lead?"

The chortle rose up from his stomach before he considered that this fairy thing was like the Vice-Secretary to God or something. "Follow me? Then it's the blind leading the blind, because I needed a babysitter to get through the apocalypse. I've never done a thing right in my life, besides kill the odd demon here and there."

"I will be paying very close attention to your next failure," Remiel said in a friendly tone. "That's why it's so hard to get here intentionally. It's a paradox: you need to literally stumble into it."

"And I'm the Heavyweight Champ of Stumbling," Dean said bitterly.

"No, mon ami, it's the theater of the absurd, like Lewis Carrroll, as you said," Etienne rubbed his arm. The Spaniard turned to Grace. "There are no protocols here? You have no idea what we're meant to do?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be able to explain it," she said. "The irony is that in this space, I have no one watching what I say, yet I am unable to respond to your questions," Grace said.

"From your usual unhelpful manner I do glean that this is a new space," Balthazar snapped. "What's it called?"

The fairy shook her head. "I can't tell you. No, I really can't. Here, let me show you." She spoke for a minute or two, vehemently gesturing.

"Ol' Tink's gone off her rocker," Dean in the silence following the incomprehensible tirade.

Grace frowned. "It's a protective quality this realm has built up, perhaps, but you'll find that if you try to explain your experience here to someone, you won't have much better luck."

"I like this," Etienne said, and then he halted. "There are no meetings here, are there?"

Balthazar tousled his lover's hair. "It seems not, so perhaps you have found your calling, whatever that may be."

"We may be here, but I'm concerned about what is going on back in that horrible club," Cas said urgently, pulling on Dean's hand. "We may have discovered something new by unorthodox means, but nothing will make me agree to see you gravely harmed."

With those words, they found themselves back in Hell's Kitchen, each couple locked in a tender post-coital embrace, and a dozen or so angels staring at them from amongst the throng of humans.

These angels seemed to have emerged from their dark pastimes in the back room, perhaps because the effects of the music were partially wearing off. Their angelic virtues were starting, sputtering, stopping, and then starting again. But each angel was staring at the two couples.

"How did you do that?" one of them finally asked. "You were—magnificent."

Dean watched Cas and Balthazar's training kick in, and the two angels began interrogating the others of their kind who had witnessed something that threw the demonic proprietors into a similar wonder.

The demons had seen angelic bodies such as they were normally unable to see, and they were ready to kiss the hems of the quartet's clothing, so reverent were they of anything matching their angelic archetypes.

Too bad none of them were wearing any clothes. That might have been something to write home about, or Heaven, at any rate.

The angels had seen something they desired on an equally deep level, something they described as a depth or a luxuriance in the angelic forms that had lately been flaying each other.

"You mean, it's not forbidden?" one of them asked, echoing Cas' words from earlier. He reached out and punched the person standing next to him.

"No, my friend, it's not quite as simple as all that," Balthazar's sword had traveled casually to the offending angel's throat. "You'll have to answer for senseless violence against a human. Or one of your fellows," he added hastily, as the other angels were sizing each other up. "As long as the old rules are on the books, you can and will be prosecuted. But do pay attention for coming changes."

Balthazar and Cas flew back to heaven with their prisoner, leaving Etienne and Dean to wander back to the East Village apartment, where they made smoothies and washed off at least the surface level of the weirdness from the night before. In comfortable clothes they lounged around, trying to make sense of it all.

"I think discovering a new dimension counts as improv," the Spaniard observed, and they laughed. "Do you think we've done something terrible, Dean?" he asked more seriously. "You saw those angels are like children in a sweets shop after the Lenten fast. They want something dark that has been denied them. And they have no idea how to handle themselves."

"And we do?" Dean ran his hand down the other man's back. They were a little closer in private than either of their mates would be comfortable with. "You need to wear that outfit for me sometime, Tiny. I told you I had your style pegged."

Etienne settled into the curve of Dean's shoulder. "No, I am serious. This chemical reaction you and I seem to have an affinity for, this ability to make opposites coexist without changing their nature, it may be an amusing investigation for us. But the success of this club already shows there is something angels are missing, and they'll do anything to get it."

Dean sat up sharply. "What if this is like one of those new worlds that the Navajo system seems to grow every once in awhile? If the old Heaven-hell divisions are becoming obsolete, then we need to ease people into it."

"A punch in the nose is not easy, mon ami," Etienne objected.

"Right. Which is why we need baseball cards."

Etienne looked uncertain.

"Actually, really more like Pokemon cards," Dean said.

Etienne looked alarmed. "It will take me a century to catch up to what I missed in a century."

Dean got up to rummage in his store of treasures from his father's archives. "Every once in awhile my dad used to feel guilty for not giving me and Sam a normal childhood, so he got it into his head that he would do something from his childhood—get us started collecting baseball cards. You're supposed to trade them with other people, memorize the players' statistics, stuff like that.. Only Dad was a single-minded son of a bitch, so he couldn't resist turning it into a learning opportunity about the supernatural world."

He came back with a shoebox. "Your father drew these?" Etienne asked, turning over the cardboard rectangles with handwritten labels. "This Rugaru does not look very pleasant." He read the inscription. "Nor are its eating habits very savory. How old were you when your father gave you this gristly game?"

"I was eight, I think. Sam never even pretended to care, but I kind of got into it. Before I was allowed to hunt, it was a way for me to, how do you say, vicariously participate."

Etienne and Dean stared at each other for some minutes, passing back and forth thoughts of the sort of vicarious pleasures they could produce for both angels and demons.

They burst out laughing.

"With our shared taste for smut, and your writing skills, Tiny, we can keep both sides occupied for a long time."

And they did. New "cards" (handsomely rendered portraits made by one or two of the Limbo dwellers with drawing talent, accompanied by a pamphlet written by Etienne with Dean's help) were released every so often to titillate the darker (or lighter) fantasies of angels or demons. Neither Heaven nor Hell was very good at fantasy, Etienne pointed out, so they were doing everyone a great favor.

Every once in awhile, a real angel, one judged to be too obsessed with dark pastimes, was chosen to spend a short time in Hell. The angel's itch for darkness was scratched, the demons got to play house with a real angel for a day or so.

Everyone was happy.

Even humans, who benefitted from the now more distracted demonic hordes.

Everyone but Balthazar and Castiel, who occasionally complained about how much time their mates were spending with each other. But they couldn't deny—the two were doing remarkable things, shifting the upper and lower worlds' focus from human pawns to each other, as perhaps it always should have been.

But when they were alone, things between Cas and Dean were better than ever.

Cas' skill at certain new pastimes was commemorated in some of the trading cards. "Oh baby, you keep making it hurt so good and we're going to end up in Wonderland again," Dean panted one night.

"Grace does give me very queer looks sometimes, as if she knew what we had been doing to bring ourselves to that place," Cas admitted.

"Well, I wonder why, after you called me 'bitch' right in front of her," Dean said, laughing at Cas' scandalized expression, which contrasted oddly with what the angel in question was doing to him. Dean realized suddenly that he had fallen for Cas because the angel was the most intriguing mixture of opposites: soldier and innocent, sweet-voiced in Enochian and pleasantly growly in human speech.

"What are you thinking about?" Cas stopped for a moment.

"You," was all Dean could say before they exploded and woke up in Wonderland.

This time when Grace floated over they had a polite conversation about this new world they were discovering, Only later, when they were wandering around the many strange sights in that place did Dean say casually. "You do realize you called me a slut this time."

* * *

Cas clapped his hands over his mouth so that there was no chance of that last sentence getting out to the post-Thanksgiving audience at Bobby's.

"Dad's old monster cards?" Sam repeated. "You mean, upstairs and downstairs are like obsessed with each other, and you've made it into this industry?"

"If it keeps 'em out of regular folks' hair, I'm all for it," Bobby said, obviously slowed down by all the food and drink.

"So okay, I guess that part makes sense," Sam said, "but the whole rest of the story, I'm sorry, Dean, Cas, I don't know whose fault it was, but I couldn't follow it."

Cas had censored most of the sex from their tale, which meant it was pretty short, and then, as Grace had predicted, none of their attempts to explain the new realm ever came out in a comprehensible fashion.

Sam was going on, complaining about all the non sequiturs he had apparently heard, when their uncle clambered to his feet. "Quit your bitching, Sam. Half the stuff you say about your Navajo spirit activities doesn't make a lick of sense, and we listen politely just the same."

While Bobby walked heavily out of the room, Dean and Sam stared at each other with a new, calculating look. "Is Sam traveling to Oppositeland too?" Dean thought at Cas.

"We should look for him there," Castiel said. "I was hoping we might try some cold fusion tonight."

Sam had opened his mouth, but Dean rushed to make their mouth say, "Okay, well, see you tomorrow brother. Cas and I have some urgent official business to attend to tonight."

They zapped themselves to one of their favorite vessels and Dean settled into the accepting arms that would transport him that night.


End file.
